


All Possible Worlds

by Samarkand12



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic), Stargate SG-1
Genre: Crossover, ISOT, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-02-10 02:39:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 40,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12902181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samarkand12/pseuds/Samarkand12
Summary: When a slight irregularity during the restoration of Der Kestle occurs, the town of Mechanicsburg finds itself many thousands of light years and an indeterminate time away from Earth.  What they don't realize is that they aren't in their timeline at all.Exiled from all they knew, the cast of Girl Genius must confront the vast new vistas of all possible worlds.





	1. Wrong Turn At Zagreb

_Everything hinges on a single moment._  
  
_In one cluster of timelines, two figures stand atop a castle as a great battle ravages the town below them. One branch has the lightning strike and the castle revived. In the other one is subdued and carried away, as her ancestral seat is destroyed. In the third? The lightning strikes..._  
  
_...power courses through circuits.._  
  
_...a startled mimmoth--and there is **always** a mimmoth involved when something like this occurs--relieves itself in shock when it hears the thunder..._  
  
_...which sends a stray arc of electricity into a device in a dusty, long abandoned lab whose sudden activation reacts in improbable ways with at least seventeen other devices..._  
  
_...and a vortex of white light erupts engulfs the town and a portion of a gigantic airship, ripping both out of their home reality._  
  
_See another cluster of timelines._  
  
_Watch closely, because when the town lands in one, things are going to get interesting._  
  
+++++  
  
Upon awakening, Agatha Heterodyne knew that there had better be cake. It was totally self-indulgent. There was a town to rebuild, people to heal, and her psychotic body-stealing mother to deal with. The fate of Europa weighted on her shoulders. Nonetheless, there had better be some cake. Agatha could see it now: one quiet moment where she could eat the sweet reward for all the trouble and chaos she had suffered since that last day in Beetleburg. That's all she really asked for from the universe at the moment. So, of course there wouldn't be any.  
  
She opened her eyes.  
  
A few centimeters away on a small table was a plate emblazoned with the golden trilobite. On it was a vanilla cake covered with green frosting. Sprinkled over it were tiny candy skulls and gingerbread trilobites. Someone had written "OUR BELOVED, MERCILESS MISTRESS" in yellow icing on top. Beside it was a fork and her glasses. Sitting up, Agatha put on her glasses to see where she was. She was lying in a massive four-poster bed that could comfortably hold six people. The carvings on the bedposts depicting various incubi and succubi engaged in practises too spicy for _The Sprocket Wench of Prague_. There were also, she noticed, hefty iron rings bolted into the corners of the frame. The furnishings and decor were in the same theme. Along one wall was a fully-stocked lab bench with a cunningly-designed miniature forge in the corner.  
  
A door creaked open. A whisp of steam came out. Seizing her prize, Agatha walked across a floor heated to the perfect temperature. Past the door was a great bathroom worthy of the more dissolute Roman emperors. In the center was a marble pool set in the middle. Hot water gushed out of the mouths of brass gargoyles. The surface of the water was covered in froth. Agatha let the nightgown she had woken up in fall to the floor. Bubble bath tickled her nose as she submerged herself beneath the foam. She sighed as jets blasted out from the tub walls, aimed at precisely where muscles ached the most. Agatha picked up the plate she had set down beside the pool. Fork clinked on porcelain. Complex, atonal humming echoed about the bathroom.  
  
"Thanks, Castle," Agatha said, licking the last crumb off the plate.  
  
"Of course, Mistress," came a voice right beside her ear. "You were most adamant about your needs. I hardly think the flood from my cistern--no matter how bracing--would have been enough."  
  
"How long was I out?"  
  
"Four days," the most malevolent example of Europan architecture replied. "And before you panic, all your companions are safe and reasonably unwounded. Vanamonde is handling the aftermath of the battle."  
  
"My poor townspeople," Agatha said. "I come here to save them. And I end up wrecking the town."  
  
"Everyone says this is the best Heterodyne ascension ever!" Der Kestle said. "Death! Destruction! A Heterodyne screaming defiance against an overwhelming force as she calls the very lightning from the heavens! I admit I had unworthy doubts of you before, my mistress. But you are without a doubt worthy of your lineage."  
  
"As long as they're happy about it." Agatha smiled hesitantly. "So we won, right?"  
  
"A brutal, crushing victory snatched from the jaws of defeat." Der Kestle sniffled. "So unfortunate you were unconscious. You really deserved to watch the blood of your enemies run through the gutters. Don't worry, it was diverted to the Great Hospital for the wounded."  
  
"My ancestors might have been homicidal lunatics, but at least they were efficient."  
  
"Now, you are expected to attend the post-ascension ceremonies, mistress," Der Kestle continued. "Duty calls even for the Heterodyne."  
  
"With this place in ruins?"  
  
"Partying amid the ashes is one of the great Mechanicsburg traditions," Der Kestle said. "Don't worry, the festivites won't be too onerous. Confirmation at the cathedral, a torchlight parade, and such. A rant would be appreciated."  
  
"Have some medals struck," Agatha said. "'Hero of Mechanicsburg', Second and First Class. Make sure the one for Von Zinzer is awarded 'for valorous conduct above and beyond the call of a minion'."  
  
"Already done. The souvenir foundries were churning them out within minutes of victory."  
  
"Got to love a tourist town." Agatha slumped down in the tub. "As long as there are no complications."  
  
There was a significant silence.  
  
"Castle? Castle?"  
  
"Um, would mistress want me to have another slice of cake--"  
  
" ** _WHAT WENT WRONG THIS TIME?"_**  
  
"I am opening the balcony doors," Der Kestle said. A brass succubus offered a silk robe.  
  
Jets of water rinsed her off as she scrambled out of the tub. Wrapping her hair up in a towel turban, Agatha wrestled herself into some semblance of decency. Two doors swung aside on the other side of the bedroom. Blast shutters rattled out of the way. Outside was a balcony several floors above the courtyard. Her room must be in the keep behind the gatehouse tower. She could see over the town to the main gate. What told her things had gone seriously awry was not her eyes. It was her nose. She sniffed deeply. Salty air? Agatha gasped when she looked out upon what should be a grassy plain running down to the river running at the base of where there should have been mountains. Instead, she saw a shingled beach where the river-bank had been. Surf crashed against the pilings of the stub left of the bridge.  
  
Height. She needed height. Agatha ran pell-mell through the halls of the Castle. Its voice guided her through the maze, avoiding the most inconvenient death traps, up to the top of one of the towers. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the parapet. No longer was Mechanicsburg surrounded by the mountains of the Carpathians. All around was forest growing up right to the walls without a hill in sight. Two headlands curved out from either side of the beach to enclose a sheltered cove. Light from the two moons danced off the waves.  
  
Two moons?  
  
Astronomy was not her field. Star-watching in Europa was usually the province of reclusive sorts who muttered every so often about eldritch creatures from the inky depths of space. Still, she did know the general features of the night sky. Uncle Barry had sometimes taken her outside when she found it hard to sleep, teaching her the simpler constellations. This was no sky that had ever shone on Earth. Two small moons had replaced the one she had always known. A glittering band like one of Saturn's rings arched across the vault of the heavens. Filling the sky was not the Milky Way, but two vast ribbons of stars flowed from a massive bulge that encompassed one third of her view. The clarity of the stars was sharper than she had ever known.  
  
It was beautiful. It was astonishing. She could lose herself forever in the sight.  
  
"We're not in Transylvania any more, are we?"  
  
"No, mistress. We are not."


	2. Highsided But Not Blindsided

They were stranded on another planet  
  
_Amazing. An entire town had teleported itself across the gulf between stars. She had never heard a device that could instantaneously transport matter across mere terrestrial distances. Hitting the Castle with that much lightning must have initiated a spontaneous and amazingly non-fatal **mass transdimensional harmonic shift. No one had ended up turned inside-out or fused with a wall. Think of the implications! What might be done unintentionally could, with analysis, be replicated through SCIENCE! Or perhaps she had accidentally activated an unknown contingency measure put in by an ancestor. No matter. If she could work out the theory, then the effect could be designed into a...a...yes, a TRANSDIMENSIONAL STELLAR APPORTATION ENGINE! PUT INTO A DIRIGIBLE! GOING OUT WHERE NO SPARK HAD GONE BEFORE! AND WITH A FAINT YET FASCINATING CHANCE OF RETURNING IN ONE PIECE!**_  
  
Agatha's absently rummaged in the pockets of her bathrobe. _Ah, Der Kestle had been considerate. A notepad and pencil, the building blocks for any attempt to challenge the dull conformity of conventional human knowledge. Heee heee! She shouldn't ignore the fundamentals. The town came first. Clearly the source of the Dyne had been included in the Event. Der Kestle would have alerted her to the losse of its power core. Not surprising, as it was obviously not a mere spring arising from the earth. They had power. They were on a world that was conducive to human life. **Hmmmm. Wasn't that interesting? Mayhap a sign that her ancestors had come here before. The odds of a random jump to a terran environment was mind-boggling. Yes. There would be an initial period of colonization. There must be samples of crops and livestock in the Castle's labs. Heck, the town could live for a week off that frozen mammoth it had tried to drop on Gil and Tarvek.**_  
  
**_Clear the forest from the walls for fields and a free-fire zone. Better yet, rig some of the caverns beneath the town as greenhouses until farms could be established. Might as well start with that conservatory, now that the man-eating plant was mulch. Once established, they could begin exploration of an uncharted world. YAY! AIRSHIPS? NO, THEY WOULD HAVE TO CONSERVE PRECIOUS FUEL. POWERED MARITIME VESSELS WOULD HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM. SAILING SHIPS EQUIPPED WITH WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS (AND AUTO-CANNON) WOULD COMBINE RANGE AND FUEL EFFICIENCY. A PRIMITIVE YET ELEGANT SOLUTION. SHIPS WOULD MEAN DOCKS AND A PROPER PORT (EEEEE! URBAN PLANNING!) WITH LIGHTHOUSES ON THE HEADLANDS THAT COULD DOUBLE AS FORTRESSES! IT WOULD BE A TRIVIAL MATTER TO ADAPT A FRESNEL LENS ASSEMBLY INTO A COLLIMATED-LIGHT DEATH RAY--_**  
  
"Took you about thirty seconds to go from gobsmacked to designing hideous weapons of doom. Never change, kid."  
  
"Krosp!"  
  
"The one and only." Curled up in her lap, her lord and sovereign had doffed his red-and-gold coat to go au naturel in white fur. "This new place you took us to is terrific."  
  
"You hate water," Agatha said.  
  
"But I love fish." Krosp licked his paws. "Othar went down yesterday to check out the local seafood situation. Norwegian, you know. Came back with trout the size of a Königsberg Clockwork Shark."  
  
"Othar hasn't tried to kill off all the other Sparks, has he?" Agatha asked. "We're going to need as much tractable brainpower as possible. Although I might have to have him crush the ones who act up."  
  
"Finally, she learns." Krosp narrowed his green eyes. "One thing, this isn't the time to be Mrs. Fix It. These people need you to be The Heterodyne. So what happened went according to your secret, brilliant plan to secure us a base far away from the Empire and the Other."  
  
"Like in the Circus. Flub a line, make into an amusing comic bit," Agatha said. "Being a town leader is a lot like show business, now that you think about it."  
  
"Mechanicsburgers aren't rubes," Krosp said, "but they're even more willing to believe what a Heterodyne tells them. You're also going to have to be strong, because Wulfenbachers came along for the ride."  
  
"Wait! Gil?" Agatha leapt up, dumping a hissing Krosp out of his perch. "He was acting like an overbearing, controlling stalker on the roof, but at least some of it had to be whatever the Baron did to him."  
  
"Franz is sitting on him," Krosp said. "Literally sitting on him, in one of the Castle's secure areas. You aren't going to let him go, are you?"  
  
"I am still somewhat in love with him," Agatha said, a flush rising to her cheeks. "Practical considerations do mean I should keep my distance _lest I utterly destroy him for trying to wrest me from my rightful home."_  
  
"Yeah, and we need him as a hostage to keep Dolokov straight," Krosp said. "He was in that section of Castle Wulfenbach that was sliced off along with this town. He's representing the Empire people who weren't killed in the battle. You'll be accepting his formal surrender tomorrow."  
  
Politics. It sounded almost as confusing as her love life. Agatha headed down to her rooms to catch up on some sleep before the big day coming. Or at least spending some quiet time redesigning the observation tower she had blown up. Well, it was her town. She could selectively blow it up if she wanted to. Red fire, this was not going to be easy. The Baron had convinced his forces that she was the Other. Combine that with the hatred Europans had for Mechanicsburgers, and the Long War could erupt again on this new world. Not to mention the castle prisoners and invading Sparks who had surrendered might try to make a break for it. That. Was. Not. Going. To. Happen. They were not going to bring Europan problems here. They were going to forge a new, enlightened age of SCIENCE! and Reason if she _had to smack sense into every fool who thought otherwise._  
  
Wow. So this was how the Baron had felt.  
  
One of the minions had prepared a samovar and a plate of pastries in one of the rooms of her suite. Hoy. She was going to have to get used to having minions. And subjects. And owning a massive castle chock-full of tools and labs and terrible creations of twisted Sparky technology. Honestly? She could deal with that. Agatha sighed as she sipped from an already-filled teacup. Whoever had laid out the midnight snack had prepared Agatha's favorite tea blend, with the exact amount of sugar. They had also put out a jar of raspberry jam that brought back so many memories. It was exactly like Mom's recipe.  
  
Agatha turned.  
  
Two figures stepped into the light.  
  
"Mom? Dad?"  
  
"Yes, Agatha," Lilith Clay said. "We're here."  
  
"And what a woman you've grown up to be," Adam said.  
  
"AAAAH! CASTLE! IMPOSTERS! DEFEND ME!"  
  
++++  
  
Moloch von Zinzer hiccuped. Snail Ale tasted about as horrible coming up as it did going down. He wasn't complaining. It was wet, it wasn't any more disgusting than what got brewed in a soldier's boot between campaigns, and it had kept him drunk. So drunk. Drunk was good. When you found you were on a totally different world, and now were stuck in this nutty town and its insane Queen of Sparky Mayhem? Yeah, blotto was the best response. Rest of the town had agreed, although these lunatics were happy about it. Every keg and cask that had survived the siege had been broken open. Everyone had stood the Chief Minion of Mechanicsburg a round.  
  
Lotsa rounds.  
  
Hands kneaded his aching muscles. And--uh--whoa--other places--  
  
Moloch lifted his head off the pillow.  
  
"Heee, the toy is awake again," Snaug said. Naked. Hair still up in those pigtails. "We get to play all over again."  
  
"And it doesn't look like it's taking long to fire his boilers up," Sanaa said. Um. Looked like the tracks matched the chassis. Moloch had always wondered.  
  
"You--her--me--" The blur of the past three days resolved itself. Along why his muscles were aching. "US?"  
  
"You are a really happy drunk, Zinzer," Sanaa said, gloriously free of that orange jumpsuit. "Plus you got hammered hard enough that you stopped being a moron about things."  
  
"We worked it out. We're your concubines!" Snaug giggled, showing teeth. "Doctor Mittelmind helped with the relationship structure. It's even traditional. Chief Minion of the Heterodyne has always had droit de seigneur."  
  
"Not to mention a ten-room suite in the Castle," Sanaa said. "This is sweet. There's even a sauna."  
  
"But don't you--yes, faster, that's it--hate each other?"  
  
"Sure." Sanaa leered. "We might have to fight over you."  
  
"In a pool of edible lubricating oil!"  
  
"You might even have to tie us up and discipline us for being....naughty."  
  
"We already asked a smith in town to forge matching collars. Yay!"  
  
Moloch blinked.  
  
Oh, what the hell.


	3. Starting Life In A New Found Land

"Theopholous DuMedd and Princess Sleipnir O'Hara," Dr. Yglyn said, "I now pronounce you man and wife, until final death in which the brain cannot be recovered do you part. You are now free to perform the acts you've no doubt already been performing, only now with the permission of the deities of your choice."  
  
"HUSSSSSZAAAAAH!" cheered the crypt-keepers, throwing rice upon the couple.  
  
"Don't forget the standard donation," the curate said. "We accept all legal imperial currencies, gold, or major internal organs."  
  
"Not that they have a future," muttered the Abbess.  
  
"Oh, do cheer up. The Heterodyne will find a way." Dr. Yglyn ceremonial teeth gleamed. "And if she takes her time, the past four days will have given us plenty of soon-to-be marrieds once the month is up. Now, have you finally admitted that the girl is a true Heterodyne?"  
  
"Based on what she has done, she can't be anything else," the Abbess said. She rubbed the back of her head. "It's been impressed upon me."  
  
The Abbess slipped away as the curate greeted another couple. Night weddings in the Red Cathedral had been a reliable source of coin for the collection plate ever since Mechanicsburg had turned to tourism instead of raiding. The fools thought it a thrill to dare to wed in the dark where the Old Heterodynes had held their vile rites. Of course, the final joke was supposed to have been on the Heterodynes. Prince Vadim Sturmvoraus might have had to eat his hat. But he had eaten it with relish, knowing the Knights of Jove had a sanctuary within the town. The Abbesses of the Cathedral had been loyal servants of the conspiracy to fulfill the prophecy that would bring back the Storm King.  
  
Only now it had all gone to--the Abbess mumbled a prayer of contrition--hell. Martellus von Blitzengaard had not contacted her since the event. Either he had perished in the battle, or else he had been left behind when Mechanicsburg had disappeared. She refused to reveal the existence of the Cathedral's secret to Tarvek Sturmvoraus. That branch of the Valois had been labelled tainted by the true Knights of Jove ever since Aaronev had become the Mongfish whore's creature. Tarvek's grandfather had withheld the secret, putting it into the custody of the Blitzengaards. Worse, the boy appeared to be besotted with the Heterodyne Girl instead of his intended role of enslaving her to finally avenge Euphronysia's betrayal of Andronicus.  
  
The Abbess checked the control panel. Nothing. She had little knowledge of the sciences behind the secret. They certainly weren't intended to reach across distances between solar systems. There wasn't a sign that the routine acknowledgement signal between the Cathedral and the Refuge of Storms had been received. She was well and truly cut-off. Perhaps examining the secret might tell the Heterodyne girl a way to return home. She would never find it as long as the Abbess lived. She would hold to her oaths to God and the Storm-King-to-Come. Let this town rot on an alien world, far from the victims that had persecuted over the centuries. A great irony, that The Heterodyne had saved Europa from her spawn's inevitable rampages.  
  
This portal was closed.  
  
++++  
  
Skifandrians didn't meditate. Zeetha had tried it once with her old friend-with-benefits Yeti from the circus. It didn't do anything for her. No, a Skifrandrian danced. She whirled through the sacred dance of rejoicing in a clearing she had found outside the walls. _Quataras_ flashed. Naked skin gleamed in the light of the two moons. Zeetha twirled through stances and movements that had been been taught in the Royal House of the Warrior Queen's Hidden Jewel for generations. She danced to celebrate the victory of her _zumil._ She danced to thank Gwangi for sending so many worthy enemies to meet her blades. She danced for life and love and happiness.  
  
Zeetha danced in memory of a home she would never see again.  
  
She wouldn't give into despair again. That would spit on the gift Agatha had given her. For years, she had thought her fever-warped memories of Skifander were fantasy. Agatha had proven that they were true. So had hearing the Baron command her to surrender in Skiff, and Gil knowing certain techniques only a Skiff warrior would know. So her homeland was somewhere out there among the stars. It was enough to remember. Zeetha wasn't in any hurry. The duty of the _kolee to_ her _zumil_ was more than a few months. It could be years. Zeetha would never leave Agatha's side until the work was done.  
  
Oooo, mental note: schedule surprise training session after the ceremony. Couldn't have her slack off.  
  
Fangs seemingly showing, Zeetha sashayed over to the edge of the clearing. Airman Higgs lay against a tree. His striped jersey had been tossed aside to reveal a very yummy chest criss-crossed with scars. Pants were still on. Not for long. Zeetha sank down to straddle him for the second, very important part of the dance.  
  
Cha-cha-cha-cha.  
  
++++  
  
"It's wonderful!" Violetta preened before the mirror. "I take back almost every horrible thing I said about you."  
  
"I'm afraid the only fine fabric in quantity," Tarvek said, feeding a wasp eater, "that survived the battle were a few bolts of purple silk for making Heterodyne livery."  
  
"Don't care. It has a sash and petticoats and nothing practical whatsoever." Violetta hiked up the hem of her skirt. "See? High heels. I couldn't infiltrate an Oktoberfest in these. EEEEEE!"  
  
"We found a sonic weapon even more debilating than the Doom Bell," Tarvek muttered. "I never understood why you wanted to go to parties. You used to mock Anevka and the others mercilessly at family functions."  
  
"That was because they were boring and snooty." Violetta bit her lip. "Uh, sorry, I know 'Nevka was close to you."  
  
"I said my good-byes." Tarvek absently brushed mustelid whiskers away from an earlobe. "Still, you used to complain all the time about Grandmother's deportment lessons."  
  
"She taught me blend in and be a good little Smoke Knight mouse." Violetta flipped open a fan. "Tonight, I'm going to be flirty, girly, and without a single knife hidden anywhere. Well, maybe a couple."  
  
"Are you asking von Zinzer?"  
  
"No. Sanaa and Snaug already sunk their claws into him." Violetta fluffed her short hair. "I'll ask Maxim. Hey, we match."  
  
Violetta waltzed out of Tarvek's apartments waltzing with an imaginary partner. Good girl. She had earned it. Tarvek wondered if he should tell her she was actually an excellent Smoke Knight. Poor when it came to espionage, but otherwise quite skilled in other areas. No, he didn't need the farce of fighting off his enraged cousin. Tarvek examined his own suit for the ball he had planned this evening. It was simple dignified black evening dress, with a hint of gold frogging here and there. No epaulettes, of course. Those were tasteless. The effect was meant to evoke subdued elegance without outshining the lady of the evening. Much of the past few days had been spent frantically working on Agatha's wardrobe. He would not have her go to her coronation in ragged togs! She would be pretty! And menacing!  
  
A wasp eater trilled for food. He tossed it a bite of weasel chow. The other octo-ferret cubs hanging off his body nuzzled him. Mmm. Yes. He had better ensure his clothing had multiple pockets. He had already formulated a chemical treatment to electrostatically repel fine hair. He had also crafted several cunning devices disguised as jewelery to collect that charge for defensive uses. Tarvek glanced at his reflection in the mirror. Once he had been the heir apparent to Sturmhalten. He was semi-officially the Storm King Pro Tem, Now, he might as well call himself Lord Paramount of Weasels. At least they were easy subjects to please.  
  
Rather useful, as well. He had found out some very interesting information taking them walkies around Mechanicsburg.  
  
A mirror placed in an inconspicuous yet perfect spot warned him that Boris Dolokhov had come by the front of the store. Tarvek had taken rooms in a tailor's shop whose owner had not survived the siege. He had given some of the gold Franz had flung at him to "REJOICE" to the man's widow. Staying in the castle would send the wrong message. Yes, eventually Agatha would be his bride and he would prove the better of that oaf Gilgamesh Wulfenbach. He frowned at that. Stupid idiot. Why, oh why had he stayed on board that airship? Well. He had plans to deal with that. To continue, staying at the Castle would mean he was there on Agatha's sufferance. He would also be more under control of the Castle. No, better he establish this as an atelier where he could practise his work. And gain intelligence as his female customers gossiped in the salon.  
  
"Gospodin Dolokhov," Tarvek said in perfect Russian. "I have always admired your service to the Baron, if not admired the Empire you served."  
  
"I still serve the Baron," Dolokhov said, face dour. The man was said to have had no sense of humour.  
  
"I see. Of course, given the extreme circumstances, the title falls to Gilgamesh." Tarvek steepled his fingers. The effect was slightly ruined by being covered in weasels. "Who is in custody for attempted abduction of the Heterodyne, and under observation for whatever mind-control his father inflicted on him."  
  
"The Empire will not act under duress," Dolokhov said. "We will not be influenced by Master Gilgamesh being kept hostage."  
  
"No, but he is not a fit leader at present," Tarvek said.  
  
"Are you asking me submit the Empire's forces to the Storm King? Your family was responsible for the Other's atrocities and the chaos that lead to this!"  
  
"No. I wouldn't dare," Tarvek said. "What I am suggesting--informally, without any official standing--is that you quietly advise the Heterodyne."  
  
"The Heterodyne has her own Seneschal," Dolokhov shot back. "Vanamonde von Mekkan was able enough to run Mechanicsburg on the sly. He has his grandfather to rely on. The Heterodyne doesn't need me."  
  
"Herr von Mekkan knows how to serve a town," Tarvek replied. "Not a world. You've had years of serving one of Europa's most powerful and skilled rulers. Agatha will probably already be working out strategies ten minutes after she wakes up. What she lacks is experience in anything larger than a city-state. You can help her."  
  
"Why should I potentially help cement the Other in power?"  
  
"Funny thing, Herr Dolokhov. I've been taking the wasp eaters out and about." Tarvek scritched a cub under its chin. It trilled in delight. "Haven't found a single one of those stealth revenants, except among a few tourists. The natives are uninfected. They should have been among the first to be wasped. I don't think Lucrezia ever had any purchase here.'  
  
"I see." Dolokhov folded his four arms across his chest. "And you honestly believe this untried young woman, heir to fifty generations of psychotic lunatics on her father's side, can resist the Other's power and establish a functioning colony on an alien world?"  
  
"Herr Dolokhov, one thing I have learned about Agatha," Tarvek said, "is that she is capable of anything."  
  
++++  
  
"Schmekka coffee?" Zoing offered up a cup.  
  
"Thanks." Franz delicately raised the trilobite-embossed china to his lips. "Ah, that's the stuff. The Mistress' best brew."  
  
"Yop." Zoing turned its single eye on the pacing figure in the corner. "Master okeydoke?"  
  
"Still smells wrong."  
  
Gilgamesh Wulfenbach paced his cell, muttering "disobedient girl, disobedient girl" over and over.  
  
"...and, to be honest, he's creeping me out."  
  
Zoing looked at the many sketetal motifs carved into the stone around them.  
  
"Arounndebend?"  
  
"No idea."


	4. Home Sveet Home

Der Kestle was quite enjoying being valuable seaside property. It had long dreamed of traveling around the world. That had nearly happened a few times in the various incarnations of Castle Heterodyne, generally involving the more high-entropy experiments of the Masters. Then there had been the promising scheme involving giant treads dreamed up by Zagnut, but the fatal accident with the Corporeal Duplicator had shelved that plan. So it had to be contented with the world being brought to it. Usually in chains, or with the nails still on where someone had foolishly thought that would stop a Heterodyne. Now it could sense the bracing ocean air. The surf on the shore tickled its seismic receptors rather pleasantly.   
  
Perhaps it could ask the Mistress for a new cupola styled as a straw boater. Or better yet, a boat-house! It already knew the Mistress had several plans in store. Those lighthouses were a promising start. Der Kestle devoted a considerable portion of its congnitive resources to the paradox that was its new Heterodyne. There was a worrying streak of heroism and mercy in her that was clearly the fault of Master Barry and the Clays. Tsssk. Yet there was a surprisingly vicious, ruthless streak in the Mistress that was pure Heterodyne. The mixture was like nothing Der Kestle had ever seen in the family. Both heroic and villainous, with an enthusiastic energy bolstered by a Spark that might be even stronger than her father's.  
  
And she liked the Castle and the town.  
  
Life with the previous Masters had been so lonely.  
  
Der Kestle dismissed such depressing thoughts. They were ones best left in the past, when it's mind had rotted within the prison of its damaged structure. Promising days lay ahead. It reveled as energy washed through newly-repaired systems from the Great Movement Chamber. The Dyne still poured out its waters as before. That wasn't a complete surprise. Old Egregious had written that the source of the spring might not lie within the easy definitions of space and time. Most of Der Kestle's systems had survived the transition. Oh, it had lost a few toys that had been stored in the mountainside. More than enough had come along, beneath what had been the main approaches and eastern plain, to surprise any (oh please!) unwary attackers. The town's new location was less inherently defensible than in Europa. It suspected that would prompt the Mistress to compensate in so many inventive ways.  
  
Der Kestle shifted on its foundations. There was but one fly in the ointment. Rather, several hundred of the Mistress' little clanks. The infernal devices were everywhere. They itched. It couldn't deny the clanks were useful. Teams of them were performing minor repairs and even optimizing certain key systems. But it worried Der Kestle that it couldn't subsume them into its larger consciousness. The Spark within them resisted any attempt at subversion. Worse, the two Primes had actually defied the Mistress. At least the Queen was keeping them under control. Der Kestle devoted a fragment of its attention to the callypyian clank. It was--  
  
"Oh, thank you," Der Kestle said, as it saw what it was doing to one of the Movement Chamber's circuits. "No-one ever got around to cleaning behind there."  
  
Queenie trilled a series of dings and musical notes.  
  
"Why, madame, so forward. I do admit, though, that I am nicely built."  
  
Queenie trilled again.  
  
"Any requests? Well, one can't have too many weather-vanes."  
  
Queenie produced a pad and pencil, twin blue eyes looking up expectantly.  
  
"Madame, I believe this is the start of a wonderful relationship."  
  
++++  
  
Her town.  
  
Strange feeling, Agatha thought as she wandered the streets of Mechanicsburg in the pre-dawn twillight. She had never had a home. The closest she had known was Beetleburg. Even there, she had never felt as if she really belonged. Mechanicsburg? It felt _right_. She hadn't been in the town long before heading into the Castle. The high-speed tour she had done during the siege hadn't excactly given her an intimate understanding of the place. Not to mention she had, er, blown up a few landmarks. Still, she was as comfortable among the winding back streets as if she were native-born. A sense of belonging washed up through her boots into her mind. She instinctively knew where to turn in spite of the maze of the Windings. Could it be a sympathetic link created when she had drunk of the Dyne? Or was it ancestral memories coming to the fore, perhaps encoded somehow in the stones? Whatever it was, she knew she was where she belonged.  
  
None of her subjects took any overt notice while she wandered among them. Agatha hadn't wanted the fuss she'd create as The Heterodyne. So she'd borrowed an old narrative device from tales of Andronicus Valois going incognito among the common people. Although according to Tarvek, apparently it had been less Haroun Al-Rashid and more sneaking out to seduce most of the nubile females of Europa. No that desperate for consorts yet in spite of Der Kestle's nagging. Agatha wore a simple dress, her hair hidden beneath of wig of long black curls. At least she hoped it was a wig. It could an--ugh--scalp. Everyone was playing along with the fiction that she was in disguise, in spite of having Adam and Lilith flanking her. Not to mention a troop of Jaegers who loped along the streets and rooftops, the death-ray she had slung over her shoulder, town defenses activating wherever she went, and a really big wrench sheathed at her hip. Because odds were someone like Zola would try something right when Agatha believed she was safe, and Agatha meant to give said person a very warm welcome indeed.  
  
The damage was pretty bad. Whole blocks had been flattened in the fighting. Streets were blocked by debris, wrecked clanks, and in several cases mysterious bubbling substances that the Mechanicsburg Public Works Department had roped off as "DANGER--FOR ANALYSIS BY THE HETERODYNE". She already had gathered several sample tubes for later examination. Yet there were signs of rebuilding. Several buildings re-assembled themselves when Der Kestle levitated their stones back into place. New cobblestones were being relaid where the acid-spraying street cleaners had been. War-machines and constructs were dissected and hauled away to the huge vaults beneath the city. Bunting in traditional Heterodyne colors and green-and-gold was being hung in preparation for the Big Day. A tough bunch, Mechanicsburgers. They survived. Sieges, wars, the whims of the Heterodyne, transportation to an alien world: the people of this town endures. They might even survive her.  
  
Well.  
  
Fifty-fifty chance.  
  
Agatha passed by a coffee shop. Oh, yes, she had to take care of that. Rinja curtsied to her when she opened the door. That would take some getting used to! The stout cafe owner enveloped Lilith in a big hug as Agatha searched among the booths. There he was. Vanamonde von Mekkhan had collapsed over a table, a mug clutched in one hand. Agatha gently prised it out of his grip. Glancing back, she saw her foster mother and father had already brought in two sawhorses and a plank sourced from a PWD squad. Rinja sterilized the improvised slab from a jar of solution kept under the front counter--this was Mechanicsburg--while Adam carried her Seneschal over his arm. Vanamonde stirred but did not awaken as he was secured in place. Atonal humming filled the shop as Agatha rummaged in a black medical bag she had brought with her. She had already done spot-repairs on several Jaegers in her walkabout. Ah, good, there was a cranial drill.  
  
_Let's get the holes drilled._  
  
++++  
  
"Hyu found it!" Oggie said. "Verra goot, ve'z hed patrols out lookink for it."  
  
"We spotted it in a tree while we were getting dressed," Zeetha said.   
  
"Ach, young luff," Dimo said, a bottle with a skulls-and-crossbones in his organic hand. "Ve's verra glad for Heegs, he's needs a voman's touch in his life."  
  
"Lots of touching undt--" Maxim impacted a wall when Dimo's mechanical hand lashed out. "Ooooof!"  
  
"Eediot," the elder Jaeger said, without rancor.  
  
"Agatha fix that up for you?" Zeetha asked.  
  
"Yah, ven she vas sleep-schparking yesterday." Dimo flexed the clank-arm. "Hyu vant ve bring it down?"  
  
"No, I'll bring it myself." Zeetha smiled craftily. "So, you boys know Higgs?"  
  
"Heh, schneaky pointy gorl." Oggie's fangs showed. "Hyu be gettink Der Kestle or Heegs after hyu, vit nosy questions like dot. Dey say curiosity kills de cat."  
  
"Hya, dose go great mit mustard undt bog-jelly," Maxim said.  
  
Da Boyz knew him. Strong. Zeetha quivered a little at the memory of how strong. Able to take a hell of a beating. Knew Mama Gkika. Slipped into an Old Mechanicsburg accent when he was--heh--distracted. Surprisingly ticklish. This would be a really fun dance. That she might be killed if she came too close to Higgs' big secret added spice to it all. Zeetah laughed as she descended ever deeper into the Castle's dungeons. Skeletal remains of previous guests had been arranged on the dark stone walls as an advertisement of what happened to those who annoyed--or, let's face it, amused--the Heterodynes. Super-creepy, but she wasn't about to let Agatha's home freak her out. That was not a game she was going to lose.  
  
Gil's cell door was a monstrous face with interlocking fangs. It yawned open right before she stopped at its landing. A throaty chuckle came out of its throat as she ducked beneath the sharpened steel fangs. Ominous clicks came from the darkness on either side. The normal iron-cored door with warped oak planks covering swung aside with a creak that had to have been engineered into it. Franz and Gil's little construct pal were playing cards. Franz's expression and the pile of gold in front of Zoing hinted that it wasn't the dragon who was winning. Beyond them was a moat full of greenish water. Water sloshed over the sides as things beneath the surface circled a cage set on a pedestal in the middle of the pool.   
  
Gilgamesh Wulfenbach sat cross-legged in his prison. He spared Zeetha a sour look when she came in. Hands behind her back, she kicked a table over to the edge of the moat. Zeetha couldn't help smirking when she set down the prize she had found while star-gazing. She'd allowed Higgs to be on top the fifth time. She'd learned a lot about defending herself from the prone position than she ever had before. Gil buried his face in his hands while she dusted off The Hat with exagerrated care. Not a scratch on it, in spite of crashing with the rest of the bit of Castle Wulfenbach. Twisting the pilot-light knob, she lit the Flame of Awesome with a handy torch. Zeetha leaned back in a chair, feet up on the table, while Gil smacked his head against the bars.  
  
"Doesn't this make you happy?" Zeetha said.  
  
"For the last time, I'm sorry I dissolved your costume," Gil growled. "This is cruel and unusual punishment. Twisted even by Heterodyne standards."  
  
"Lighten up, Gil," Zeetha said. "Why shouldn't I prank family? I have years of it to catch up on."  
  
"Family." Gil blinked. "'Your Highness'. Father saying you were sent to kill me. Similarity of sleep-deprivation control disciplines-- _sister!_ "  
  
"You're my twin. I bet if we compared birthdays," Zeetha said, "and the Baron hadn't fudged yours, they'd be the same."  
  
"Father said he saved my life," Gil said. "Skifandrian culture has a stigma against twins, I assume."  
  
"In the royal house? You bet," Zeetha said. "Twin sisters is a bad sign, a portent of strife within the succession. A male twin? Forbidden by Ashtara, as the male will try to overthrow the rightful princess' power."  
  
"So how is it handled?" Gil asked. "Exposure? The silk bow cord was the Ottoman way. Or would I have been sacrificed to the goddess?"  
  
"Pffft, we aren't monsters!" Zeetha replied. "Come on, give us a little credit. Mom and the High Priestesses would have put on a huge show, then you'd have been quietly adopted out to one of the nobles. You'd have ended up snuck back into the palace as my playmate."  
  
"Then Father--"  
  
"Jumped to conclusions and punched his way through half the Royal Guard." Zeetha rolled her eyes. "Mom always said my dad never listened to anyone if he was convinced he was right."  
  
"Know the feeling." Gil massaged his head.   
  
"So, you're family. The only family I have right now." Steel hissed. The _quataras_ gleamed in the light of Gil's Hat. "Which is why I'm warning you nicely that if you try anything with Agatha again, I'll end you."  
  
"She's a threat," Gil growled. "There's no telling how deep the rot has spread. She was out of control. Not listening to reason. _She should have come with me."_  
  
"Great plan, fly off with the son of the man who was blasting her town to pieces," Zeetha said, "and was also under the slaver-wasp control of the Other."  
  
" _We had an agreement. I would never have let my father harm her."_ Gil clenched his fists. " _She would have been in a secure place until Father and I agreed she was no threat._ "  
  
"So Agatha would have just calmed down once you dragged her away." Zeetha narrowed her eyes. "You would have had to keep her sedated, chained up, or used one of the Baron's operations to dumb her down. We had this conversation before, didn't we?"  
  
" ** _I was blinded by weakness. Agatha can't be allowed to run free. Look at what she's done!_** "  
  
"I asked Doctor Mittelmind about mind control," Zeetha continued, ignoring her brother's rage. "Conditioning someone to obedience in the short time the Baron had you would have turned you into a zombie. Unless he used your own worst instincts about Agatha against you."  
  
" ** _There was no other way!_** "  
  
"Fight it, brother," Zeetha said. "Be the man who Gkika said thought the Doom Bell was wonderful because it meant Agatha was still fighting. The Baron isn't here any more. Break what he did--"  
  
_" **NEVER! I WILL NEVER ALLOW HIM INTO HER CLUTCHES! YOU ARE ALL BLIND FOOLS! AGATHA HETERODYNE WAS EVER THE PAWN OF HER MOTHER! I WOULD BURN DOWN THIS WORLD BEFORE LUCREZIA COULD SINK HER CLAWS INTO HIM!**_ "  
  
Oh, no.  
  
The Baron would never do that, would he?  
  
But Zeetha had seen it before. That wrongness.   
  
"Why Gil," Zeetha said, glaring back at him, "you're acting like such a....chump."


	5. Graduation Day

There, nice and neat. Agatha adjusted the healing engines attached to Van's scalp to send a soothing pulse through his brain. The poor man had been up for days while she had been out. He had earned a few more hours of sleep. Settling into the booth opposite him, she flipped through the stack of drool-covered paperwork her seneschal had used as a pillow. Funny how paperwork seemed like a pleasant diversion, when it had been the bane of her existence as Doctor Beetle's personal secretary. She skimmed through the reports, noting down suggestions and approvals in the margins.  
  
Most of it dealt with the reconstruction effort and locating supplies. The first she couldn't help with unless she lent a personal hand. Tempting, though she could mentally feel Zeetha's stick rapping her skull about delegating responsibilities The second brought the welcome news that, with Der Kestle operational, they had found the emergency supply caches within the fortress. They had also found the castle kitchens, although there was a worrisome entry about flamethrower requisitions to deal with "mold issues". Agatha perked when she came to the maps. Van had been entreprising enough to launch a tethered observation balloon. Mechanicsburg had landed on what appeared to be a good-sized island--at least thirty kilometers from end to end--in the midst of what seemed to be an archipelago. The Jaeger scouts hadn't found any sign of human habitation, though.  
  
Well, it could simply be the locals sensibly hiding from the Jaegers.  
  
A polite cough came from the front of Rinja's coffee shop. Doctor Mittelmind and Professor Mezzalsalma stood in the doorway flanked by a pair of Jaegers. Agatha brightened. Yes, the two of them had been consigned to Castle Heterodyne for no-doubt hideous crimes. They had also proven exceptionally loyal and competent servants. She had already decided to put Mittelmind under Otilia's stewardship in Child Welfare Services; Mezzalsalma's skill with high-voltage electrical equipment would be helpful repairing the town's power system. Putting aside her wig, Agatha gestured for the two Sparks to approach her for a formal audience.  
  
Doctor Mittelmind plopped a mortarboard atop her head, as Mezzalsalma offered a parchment rolled up and tied with a ribbon.  
  
What?

**The Collegium convened XXXX, XX, 189X has declared that  
AGATHA HETERODYNE  
(Lady of Mechanicsburg, Crusher of All Who Stand Before Her, Etc. Etc.)  
Shall be granted the Honor and Dignity of  
A Doctor of SCIENCE! Cum Laude**   


"Guys, you didn't need to issue me an honorary degree," Agatha said, blushing furiously.  
  
" _Honoris causa_? Perish the thought!" Mittelmind said. "By all academic traditions of Europa, a group of learned scholars may convene a collegium to grant a degree to a worthy candidate."  
  
"In all honesty, it's an excuse to drink and talk shop," Mezzalsalma added. "The precendent is valid. My lady has fulfilled all the qualifications for a doctorate."  
  
"I never took any of the exams or wrote a thesis--" Agatha frowned as the two Sparks exploded in riotous laughter. "What was so funny?"  
  
"It's amusing that you're thinking like a minion," Getwin said, chortling. "Only lackeys bother with such trivialities. It is the practicum that matters."  
  
"No degree is worth anything if you haven't ripped it off the corpse," Mezzalsalma said, wiping a tear from his eye, "of the craven fool of a teacher who denied your genius."  
  
"That explains so much about Transylvania Polygnostic graduation ceremonies," Agatha said, recalling several times when she had had to dive into an emergency bunker during such occasions.  
  
"No need for a thesis when you've invented a unique contribution to SCIENCE!" Mittelmind explained, as a swarm of her little clanks passed outside.  
  
"And your handling of the Si Vales?" Mezzalsalma kissed his fingers. "Magnificent. A twisted, mad assault on the very foundations of medical reason."  
  
"And the cum laude?"  
  
"Dropping a small house on the Baron," both men said at the same time. "We awarded you style points for that."  
  
"Agatha Heterodyne, Ph.D." She clutched the scroll to her chest. "I will treasure this forever."  
  
"Consider it a gesture that you are fit to stand among us as your peers," Mittelmind said.  
  
"My...peers." Agatha examined the signatures at the bottom of her diploma. About forty Sparks who--according to Van's notes--were even loonier than your average madboy. "I have to say I never expected to be among such august company."  
  
"We included several of the Baron's scientists," Mittelmind said. "To allay any suspicions that this is only a craven gesture of servile bootlicking."  
  
"I accept it in the spirit it is given." Agatha smiled. "Naturally, as flattering as this is, any of you who cause trouble or think you can stab me in the back when I'm in a good mood will be brutally crushed without mercy."  
  
"It goes without saying."  
  
"None of us would expect anything less of the Heterodyne."  
  
Her two subjects backed away in a suitably deferential matter. Agatha studied the signatures with a more criticial eye. Cornelius Senear? Oh yes, he was the one with the amusing aeroapes. She have to see if he could collaborate with Mezzalsalma on that spider-monkey infestation in one of the attics. Slaghammer? Right, the Claw Man. That one was being assigned to giant-wreck removal until he came up with something useful. The rest of them were a collection of low-grade Wulfenbach Sparks sent in to wear down the town, and various opportunists and sundry lunatics who had the rare good sense to surrender. She'd have to do something with them, if only to keep them occupied. If worse came to worse, she could dump the spare Sparks into vacant lab spaces under the Castle's surveillance. Or--yes, that might work. Establish the collegium as a formal institution under her generous, don't-mess-with-me-or-be-squished patronage.  
  
Mechanicsburg Polygnostic. It did have a ring to it, didn't it?  
  
Something chirruped by her feet. Agatha looked down. A fox-red wasp weasel sniffed her boots. Humming, it scurried up her dress on eight clawed feet. Whiskers tickled her ear as it perched on one shoulder. Where wasp eaters were... Tarvek was a half-block away with her foster parents. Adam and Lilith lifted up a freshly painted sign over a battered shop with the needle-and-thread-and-coat symbol that distinguished a tailor's shop from a resurrectionist. The sign read "The Emperor's New Clothes--Fashion Fit for Kings and Queens". A dark-skinned woman in a patched Vespiary Squad uniform was wheeling a dolly loaded with bags of weasel chow through the door. Smiling, Agatha strutted over to them twirling her diploma like a baton.  
  
"So, did you put them up to this?" Agatha asked.  
  
"I may have put forward your name for consideration," Tarvek replied, failing to appear innocent with panache. "It is the high nobility's privilege to call for a collegium."  
  
"He is a clever young man." Adam's hand slapped him hard on the back, making Tarvek's knees buckle. "Whatever happened in Sturmhalten aside."  
  
"The past is the past." Lilith laid a motherly hand on his shoulder that coincidentally was also a nerve pinch.  
  
"Goodness yes, that's all behind us isn't it Agatha!"  
  
"Mom, Dad, it's alright." Agatha smiled. "Tarvek's reformed. After all, he knows exactly how angry I can get."  
  
"Don't spoil our fun, dear," Lilith said. "We've been waiting ages to intimidate your suitors."  
  
"I've found the perfect rotary cannon to polish in the front parlor while he's visting," Adam added.  
  
"There's no chance I can flee under cover of darkness, is there?" Tarvek said.  
  
"None whatsoever," Lilith assured him.  
  
"There's a suitor, singular." Agatha grimaced. "Until I work out something with Gil--"  
  
"I understand," Tarvek said. "You should take this time to concentrate on your town. Whatever is between us can wait."  
  
"That's gracious of you," Agatha said.  
  
"I want you of sound mind when I convince you Wulfenbach is a churlish, unworthy oaf." Tarvek paused, nodding to her foster parents. "Although I concede he's not without talent in the vitalistic arts. He did some good with his blatant currying of favor."  
  
Life was still complicated, it seemed.  
  
Well. Her town was safe. Her foster parents were resurrected. There was a world to explore, experiments to do, and weasels to snuggle.  
  
It was good to be alive.  
  
"Mistress," Der Kestle's voice said in her ear, pitched low for privacy, "I have called for an alert. The Baron is here."  
  
".... ** _WHERE?"_**  
  
++++  
  
Moloch von Zinzer wasn't a natural minion. He wasn't. Really, he wasn't. It must be his gift at engine-tending that had everyone mistaking him for one of the yeth-marthster drooling idiot brigade. Sparks were like a certain types of machines. Not the reliable kind that chugged along, but the madboy-designed ones that ran hot all the time. You had to be on your toes around those. A mechanic had to know every little quirk--gearboxes that exploded when if you put something blue on them, for example--and keep an eye on the gauges for sudden changes.  
  
So it wasn't his minionly instincts that had him scurrying to ready Lucrezia's lab when he had heard the Castle's warning and Her Nibs' enraged scream coming from the town. It was pure survival instinct. Mommy Undearest's stuff had been hauled up to the Red Playroom by him and the Roving Band of Heroic Repairmen before Moloch had gone on his bender. Ferret-Boy had insisted the surviving Other machines in a stable room under Der Kestle's watch. Moloch heartily agreed. What he had seen of Lucrezia Mongfish while the locket was off convinced him that ripping her out of her brain was Really, Really Important. He'd have been in there working with Her Nibs if every instinct had been telling him it'd be suicide to be near her when she was that steamed.  
  
That was why he was standing outside her lab, away from the door, and behind solid cover. Only a crazy moron with no sense of self-preservation would go in there unless the all-clear sounded.  
  
"Ho, brother-in-law, I come to--stop that, sidekick--see your mistress," Othar Trygvassen said, providing Exhibit A.  
  
"The lady doesn't want to see you!" Violetta screamed, frantically trying to hamstring Othar. "AND I'M NOT YOUR SPUNKY GIRL SIDEKICK!"  
  
"Nonsense, I have valuable advice for her." Othar knocked away another of her knives. "This is, after all, her first penultimate confrontation with a despicable tyrant wearing the face of one she loves."  
  
"My lady can handle herself fine!"  
  
"Of course, she learned everything she knows from me," Othar said. "But every heroine needs advanced schooling. There will be the tearful confrontation, her understandable moment of weakness, the villain striking, and then I step in to destroy him and save the day. Cue young Gilgamesh's touching death scene in her arms, and the world will be safe once more from the Baron's evil overlordship."  
  
Moloch leapt out to drag Violetta behind cover.  
  
Othar strutted through the door that opened with an ominous creak.  
  
Moloch and Violetta stuck their fingers in their ears.  
  
*FOOOOOOOOM*  
  
A smoking Othar smashed into the wall across from the lab. A trapdoor opened right at the moment he peeled off the stone. The Castle sprouted a nozzle from the ceiling that gushed hot lava into the shaft.  
  
"FOUL!"  
  
"Thanks," a pale-faced Violetta said, as the trapdoor snapped shut.  
  
"Don't have to be a 'natural minion' to figure how that would turn out." Moloch risked a peek around the corner. Door was still open. "Looks like it's time to go in."  
  
"I-I'll stay here." Violetta swallowed. "No celebratory balls tonight, huh?"  
  
"Don't think so, Vi."  
  
Moloch brushed soot off his clothes. Someone had arranged a dark suit and frock coat to replace his tattered cook's outfit, along with an official golden trilobite badge. Snaug had said the badge was a gift from the Heroic Repairmen. Around the edges in Latin--Doc Mittelmind had translated it--were the words "Only Sane Man In The Room". Man, he really had to thank those guys. Because he had been roped into this minion job, he wore a heavy-duty fireproofed smith's apron with tool belt underneath the fancy duds. A pair of polarized welding goggles hung around his neck. Not that the goggles would do anything if Her Nibs was that deep in the Madness Place.  
  
Green light clashed with the Red Playroom's wallpaper. Moloch shivered. Regular Spark-stuff was scary enough. The Other's machines were a whole different sort of wrong. His not-a-minion-skills could sense the difference in Sparky styles. Lucrezia Mongfish's creations stank of a spoiled, smug mind that had gone as rancid as that maggot-cheese he'd eaten working for a minor Italian count a while back. It had beaten out chewing on the dead chief-petty-officer's leg, though not by much. Her Nibs sat by a lab bench beneath the skylight. Moloch automatically dodged out of the line of fire of the death ray worryingly near her right hand.  
  
Her eyes were red from crying.  
  
Moloch took off his new derby hat--steel inner shell for shrapnel protection--to scratch his head. Weird seeing her this way, without all the wackiness that usually swirled around the kid. Black fire and slag, she was only eighteen. Some memories of his time on Castle Wulfenbach nagged him. Unpleasant ones about acting like--well, like a massive jerk. Seriously, what had he been thinking? Uh, right. "Don't want to die, don't want to die, don't let the Baron find out, I hate my life so much." Not to mention that she was able to kick his ass even before she learned whatever nutty combat skills was a little humiliating. He'd been acting like Omar, for Wayland's sake. So what if she had nearly gotten him killed 232.5 times these past few days? He owed her a lot.  
  
Anyway, he'd put on the badge. Take the mark, do the job right.  
  
"Need me to prep the slab for Wulfenbach?" he asked. "I can ask the kitchens for a moldy rutabaga you can stick the Baron into."  
  
"Hah! No. we're not ready for that." Agatha waved at some open journals. "I've been studying Mother's journal's and Tarvek's notes. Extracting the Baron won't be easy."  
  
"Thought His Purple Highness said getting your mom out of you wouldn't be any trouble," Moloch said.  
  
"Not quite as trivial as he thinks," Agatha said. "I'm triple-checking his theories. There's a chance Mom slipped some booby-traps into what she taught him. We're going to do this right. Show the Baron we can do it. _Then I'll punt Mother out of my head into a gerbil's brain, so I can drop it into a vat of weak acid."_  
  
"And the Baron?"  
  
"I'm able to fight against Lucrezia because Uncle Barry rescued me from the Geisters," Agatha said. "She meant them to train me as a compliant vessel who'd see possession as my destiny. Instead, what she ended up downloaded into was a girl who'd been fighting that locket most of her life. Poor her."  
  
Agatha flashed a vicious grin that reminded Moloch of exactly who he was working for.  
  
It was important that he not tug on his collar and sweat. Show weakness, she'd walk all over him like a warstomper.  
  
"The Baron is different. Mom doesn't nearly have the pure willpower he had," Agatha said. "Not to mention Gil loves his Dad, and whatever mind-control the Baron layered on will reinforce that."  
  
"Festivities canceled?"  
  
"Wrong. Tired of living in fear of that man," Agatha snarled. She slammed a fist down on the work bench. "Tired of my mother and Zola and everyone else screwing up my life. I'm the Heterodyne. **_There's going to be cake if I have to blast my way through anyone who tries to interfere_**."  
  
Wow, Her Nibs was obsessed with pastries.  
  
"But first, I'm going down to have a chat with Klaus," Agatha said.  
  
"A....chat?"  
  
"Yes. A civilized, calm chat."  
  
Moloch studied the expression on Agatha's features.  
  
"Before you go, can I ask a favor?"  
  
"Of course, Herr Zinzer." Agatha smiled softly. "I owe as much to you as I do Gil and Tarvek."  
  
"Give me a fifteen-minute head start to grab Sanaa and Snaug. We need to be first in the deepest blast shelter in town before you talk with the Baron."


	6. Standing Her Ground

The cage door opened. A row of floating blocks hovered over the moat. He marched out over it as if it were the broadest highway. A laundry tub of water and a few buckets of cold, along with a single bar of soap, had been left for him. It would do. Ignoring the watching dragon, he stripped off his clothes to wash off the grime of captivity. How to shave was solved when a shiny straight razor and lathered badger brush levitated before him. The Castle didn't raise a single drop of blood while it worked. Unusual. Either its mistress had given it orders, or it held less of a grudge than he had expected.  
  
The typical Mechanicsburg sense of humour was evident in the bundle of clothes by the door. Funereal black, literally. A mortuary suit. A cloth winged-rook sigil on a ribbon had been provided in place of a collar-clasp. Nothing he might use to stab. He appreciated the footwear: scuffed but honest working-man's boots. At least he might manage one decent kick before the end. Bracing himself, he strode to the cell door where a platoon of Jaegers awaited him. One of them tipped his hat as they formed an escort party around him.  
  
Time to finish this farce.  
  
++++  
  
Agatha had refused the throne of skulls. She had vetoed the festive display of amusing torture devices. The giant bell jar had been a temptation--nostalgic--but in the end decided it wouldn't fit the tone of the meeting. Not being a fool, she had assented to the brigandine corset worn beneath her blouse. A rifle-green officer's coat with a bullet-proof nyar-spidersilk lining and boiled leather breeches tucked into knee-high boots completed her ensemble. In her right hand was her Doomstick. The business end glowed with a partial charge. If need be, she could bludgeon him if the Jaegers or the Castle didn't bring him down first.  
  
Doors creaked open on the far side of the courtyard. Agatha couldn't deny her Castle a little bit of fun. Klaus Wulfenbach came through them wearing his son's face. There was no mistaking it. Gilgamesh's prescence could be magnificent when he cut loose. That time when he had faced down the war-clanks outside the gate? It still brought pleasant shivers every time she thought of it. But the son could not match the father's confidence and control. The measured pace and implacable expression could be none other than that of the Tyrant of Europa. Even the Jaegers acknowledged it. They slouched insouciantly at their posts. But there was an alert tension in them that she had come to recognize as a sign that they took the threat of Klaus very seriously.  
  
Klaus' control slipped for a moment. Gil's features twisted in fury. Agatha's fist clenched her Doomstick tight enough to cut off circulation. Galvanic arcs popped around top of the lightning-staff. She brought it into a guard position. Klaus balled his fists. The Jaegers bared their fangs and--thinking she was deaf--were laying bets. Then a massive paw slammed into the ground. The hulking form of an ornate Fun Sized Agony and Death Dispenser interposed itself between them. Its mouth was set in a permanent grin. Steam chuffed between its fangs.  
  
"Hrrrah, children, be good," it said, "or you will be sent to your rooms without your supper."  
  
"Von Pinn?" Klaus gazed upon it with wonder.  
  
"That was my worthless shell of meat," it said. "I am Otilia, the Muse of Protection. And, though freed of guarding the Heterodyne Girl, my king has charged me with protecting the peace."  
  
"My apologies, Madame Otilia," Agatha said, bringing her Doomstick out of guard. "I won't start any trouble."  
  
"Hrrah, amusing, when you are such a troublesome girl." Otilia flexed steel claws. "Though not nearly as troublesome as her mother."  
  
"How can you allow her to live?" Klaus cried out. "When you know what is beneath the mask?"  
  
"Lady Heterodyne is her mother's child," Otilia replied. "She is not, may her bones burn green, her mother. I knew Lucrezia Mongfish all too well. She is not walking among us now. So abide by the terms of the truce, Baron."  
  
Agatha and Klaus glared at one another as Otilia retreated a few meters.  
  
Klaus cleared throat.  
  
Agatha tapped her foot.  
  
"This is awkward, isn't it?' Agatha said. "Here you are, my nemesis, and I don't think we spoke since Beetleburg. There was that confrontation during the escape. But you were so busy with your dramatic rant and plans to sedate me that I never had a chance to contribute anything to the conversation."  
  
"Spare me your pique, girl," Klaus said. "Not my finest moment, I'll allow. What lead to the death of Punch and Judy was regrettable. I was still right. You were too dangerous to be allowed free."  
  
"It isn't 'girl'," Agatha snarled. "I am Agatha Heterodyne. Not your tool, not your pawn, and never under your thumb. And you did more than your share of pushing me to this point."  
  
"All this death and destruction were triggered by you!"  
  
"Let's start at the beginning," Agatha shot back, "when you kidnapped a young girl from her family's home as a hostage to control what you thought was a minor spark."  
  
"You were cast out from the university," Klaus said. There was a hint of uncertainty in his voice.  
  
"I won't deny it. Castle Wulfenbach offered me lots of opportunities," Agatha said. "That doesn't excuse ripping me away from the only home I ever knew. From my mom and dad. All because you were bored! Oh, and don't forget you left me alone with a man _who wanted to beat me up because he blamed me for the locket killing his brother."_  
  
"What did she do," Klaus asked to Otilia as Agatha started pacing, "when you found her in Castle Heterodyne?"  
  
"She blasted a shaft several hundred meters deep beneath us, forcing me to fling her to safety while I plunged into its depth. Very painful."  
  
"And then, after I had run," Agatha continued, "grieving over seeing Adam and Lilith ripped apart, my entire world shaken upside down, did you send an envoy to offer amends? Red fire, you sent a battle-dirigible crewed by a psychotic witch to drag me back by my ears. So I might have some trust issues with you, Klaus."  
  
"I didn't have time to deal with feelings," Klaus said. "The situation had escalated. The longer you were loose--"  
  
"So naturally you think I spent the summer heading for Mechanicsburg to exact revenge," Agatha said. Fond regret crept into her voice. "I didn't really think of you while I was with the Circus. Had fun. I half-thought of staying with them. What better way of hiding in plain sight? Only then--Sturmhalten."  
  
"Agatha, I swear to you," Klaus said, hands raised placatingly, "I came in force because of the threat the Other represented. The operation was as much meant to shield you as to capture you."  
  
"I believe it," Agatha said. "Everyone who had reason to fear you--Krosp, Master Payne--also spoke of you with respect for what you did to protect Europa. I was trying to warn you any way I could about the possession. The message was meant to tell everyone Lucrezia was inside me."  
  
Agatha bowed her head.  
  
"Lars. It's been only a few days." Agatha laughed. Several of the Jaegers leaned away "You must think I'm Lucrezia, the Arch-Siren reborn. Some seductress I am. All those kisses on stage, all those obvious signals, and I never admitted it until I woke up and--he--was--"  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
The words hung in the air.  
  
"So am I, Klaus." Agatha shook her head. "Such a waste. Gotterdammerung, I hate my mother for this. Almost as much _as the rage I feel **for ramming yourself into GIL'S BRAIN."**_  
  
A notebook slammed into Klaus' chest.  
  
" ** _ALL HER NOTES. TARVEK'S. MINE. A LAB RESERVED FOR YOU. AND BLACK FIRE AND SLAG, KLAUS WULFENBACH, YOU HAD BETTER MAKE QUICK USE OF IT. FIND A WAY OUT OF GIL'S BRAIN OR THE BATTLE WE FOUGHT FOUR DAYS AGO WILL BE AS NOTHING IF YOU MAKE ME COME FOR YOU!"_**  
  
Agatha drove the butt of her Doomstick into the flagstones. Electric fire flared into the air.  
  
**_"YOU ARE BANNED FROM MY TOWN. IF BY SOME MIRACLE GIL FORGIVES YOU WHEN HE FINDS OUT WHAT YOU DID, THAT IS HIS PRIVILEGE. THIS IS NOT A DISCUSSION. THIS IS NOT A NEGOTIATION. THIS IS A VOW I MAKE AS THE HETERODYNE, THAT GILGAMESH WULFENBACH WILL LIVE FREE!"_**  
  
Agatha whipped about on her heel. Her coat flared out dramatically. It was a gesture she had practised to perfection treading the board of Master Payne's stage. Ignoring whatever the Baron might say, she stalked off while flagstones shifted beneath her feet to create a stairway leading down into the Castle. Agatha allowed her feet to guide her in a random path her family's fortress. A "dook" came from a coat pocket. The fox-red weasel scrabbled up her sleeve to perch on her shoulder. She couldn't help a giggle. This might be the new fashion among pirate queens. Why not fulfill Klaus' worst instincts about her?  
  
No. She was done with him.  
  
Agatha flopped down on a handy bench. She had only a vague idea where she was. She tickled her shoulder-weasel under its chin while sunk into a bout of good-old-fashioned dramatic brooding. It was not a sulk. Not at all. Idly, she ran her hands along the keyboard behind her. Keyboard? She twisted a collar at the base of the Doomstick's head. Blue light narrowed into a coherent beam. It picked out a vast array of brass pipes, gargoyles whose mouths were open in demonic song, and several skeletons clutching various instruments. Dials glowed blue. Four manuals with keys whose ivory did not come from elephants curved around her. Beneath them were two seperate pedalboards and several clutch levers. Organ stops on the horeshoe console were intermixed with switches for "Pyrotechnic Display", "Defense System Interlock", and "ALL THE BATS!".  
  
"Pardon my presumption, Mistress", Der Kestle said. "I thought it best to guide you here. Your mood suggested a threat to my continued structural integrity if you decided to express your anger in your usual way."  
  
"Sweet lightning, what is this magnificent monstrosity?" Agatha asked, an atonal hum echoing about the vaulted chamber.  
  
"Why, it is the Magnificent Organ of Tympanus Heterodyne! Not to be confused with the Magnificent Organ of Satyricus Heterodyne, on display in the seraglio."  
  
"I never told you I played."  
  
"Oh, a castle should always find out the hobbies of the Masters and Mistresses. The Heterodyne's were not always engaged in pillage and experimentation. Take your ancestor Euphrosynia. Quite the knitter."  
  
"I have a hard time," Agatha said, finding a cabinet stuffed with orchestral scores, "envisioning a Heterodyne stitching and purling a sweater."  
  
"Well, she did use the entrails of captives--"  
  
"Castle, don't spoil this moment. Is this in tune?"  
  
"Heh heh, it might require some upkeep," Der Kestle said craftily. "There are tools in the column to your right."  
  
" ** _Perfect."_**  
  
++++  
  
He sat in a corner of Mama Gkika's. Around him, the Jaegers were in the midst of a round-robin fight. Something over a hat. They had left a respectful distance between the chaos and his booth. A mug of Mama's most potent ale rested untouched on the table-top. Thoughts about choices and necessary evil and--most agonizing of all--confirmation biases swirled through his head. An image of Agatha Heterodyne occupied the forefront of his mind. Enraged, dangerous, an Old Heterodyne. Nothing at all like Bill and Barry. They had been ashamed of this town. Never rude to their subjects, but never spending much time here. Agatha had embraced it, as he had feared.  
  
And her scream of rage had not been over his actions against her, but against his son.  
  
Damn her.  
  
She had had a point.  
  
"That's for Doctor Vapnoople, pal."  
  
Klaus Wulfenbach looked across the table to that final experiment of Dmitry's he had thought destroyed. The cat dipped a herring into a bowl of cream.  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"For my creator. He might have been dim even before you chopped up his brain. He was still my creator. So that's for him."  
  
"Are you telling me," Klaus said slowly, "that you are claiming all this was your master plan to avenge him?"  
  
"Yeah, worked out great." Krosp munched his fish. "You never had a chance against me, of course. At least you lost to a peer."  
  
Klaus nodded. At all made sense, really.  
  
There should be a sharp knife around somewhere he could fall onto a few times.  
  
Then the music began. Screeching, Krosp launched himself to the ceiling. The Emperor of Cats clung by his claws upside-down. Klaus clutched his head as the music blasted through several levels of Mechanicsburg tunnels into Mama Gkika's. Cries of "DE ORGAN!" and "VOO HOO, DE MISTRESS IS ROCKINK OUT MIT HER--ho, yez, she can't do dot?" and "Not vit out sugery" greeted the cacaphony. The music was wild. Untamed. Unbelievable. She's back! _She won. **It's glorious!**_  
  
" ** _AGATHA!"_** screamed Gilgamesh Wulfenbach.


	7. Losses and Gains

"Hoo, dot's Tympanus' _Music to Invade Poland By_ ," General Khrizan said. "De 'Screaming on de Vistula' svuite."  
  
"Vun of his intimate compositions," General Goomblast said. "De Mistress is verra goot. Clever improvisation on de leitmotifs, no, Gospodin Dolokhov?"  
  
"CAN YOU MAKE HER STOP?" Boris screamed, two hands clamped over each ear.  
  
"Tch, some pipple heff no sense ov appreciation for de arts," General Zog said.sniffing disdainfully.  
  
Boris Dolokhov had a love-hate relationship with the Jaegermonsters. The Jaegers loved to mock him. He hated them. It was a stable, almost comfortable arrangement. The Jaeger-Generals were extended a conditional exemption from his loathing for being the least annoying of the lot. Said exception was rapidly being discarded as they chivvied him down the tunnels beneath Mechanicsburg for some unknown purpose. He only hoped it wasn't some drawn out vengence plotted by the Heterodyne. Her sudden, inexplicable burst of rage in the street this morning did not bode well.  
  
The cacaphony abated the deeper they went. The party came into a great space that was a cross between a beer hall and a weapons range. A great stage dominated the chamber. All around the room lounged Jaegermonsters and Wulfenbach personnel. Boris relaxed slightly when he saw that both groups were engaged downing pints of beer. Ironically, it had been the Jaegers who had been the ones to save the surrendering Imperial troopers. The Heterodyne's shock troops were, to a construct, a degenerate bunch of bloodthirsty lunatics. They had also served alongside the Baron's forces for years. Their warped senses of honor and bizarre ideas of fair play had lead to most of them accepting Wulfenbach surrenders without too much damage inflicted on the latter.  
  
Boris waved off an offer of a mug with one of four arms. He was seated near the front of the stage by himself. He noticed that the surviving officers and department heads were seperated from their people. The Jaegers clung to stupidity with glee, but they also had centuries of cunning to draw upon. The Imperial prisoners had been kept isolated from one another during their captivity, held in the many rooms that Mechanicsburg had built for the tourist trade. Which, in typical Mechanicsburg fashion, doubled as handy cells. A Jaeger of Amazonian stature stepped onto the stage, blowing a whistle.  
  
Master Gilgamesh strode onto the stage. A hush descended on the Wulfenbachers. Even the Jaeger muted their irreverent jokes. Two Vespiary Squad troopers in green cloaks, masks, and warrior-caste skulls entered from the wings. In their hands were wasp-eaters. Silently, Boris thanked the Almighty that his warning to the unit had reached them. The wasp eaters sniffed the Baron's son. A collective gasp of relief erupted from the Wulfenbachers when the weasels hummed happily. Not wasped! Smiling, Master Gilgamesh flipped around a chair. He straddled it, arms resting on the chair back.  
  
"I bet you all have a lot of questions," Gilgamesh said. "Before you do, I want to make it clear that you are safe. You are not about to be wasped. We're under Agatha's protection, not her prisoners."  
  
"But the Other--" yelled someone from the back.  
  
"It's a long story," Gilgamesh replied. "The Other tried to invade the Lady Heterodyne's mind. It failed. Unfortunately, it managed to wasp my father with an engine created by supporters of Aaronev Sturmvoraus' conspiracy."  
  
As the assembly exploded in shouting, Boris quietly mourned the confirmation of what he had suspected.  
  
" _Quiet!"_ snapped Master Gilgamesh, the Spark's authoritative harmonics thrumming above the organ music. " _We are not defeated. We are here, free, and alive. My father will be avenged_ "  
  
Master Gilgamesh smiled as everyone froze.  
  
"Everyone paying attention? I don't have to put on the hat? Goodness, the day is looking up already. Herr Dolokhov, join me on stage."  
  
For the first time in days, Boris Dolokhov smiled. He stood beside his Baron, at last.  
  
"As everyone of you knows, we constantly developed contingency plans." Gilgamesh gestured to Boris. "Several in particular were created for the situation we find ourselves in today."  
  
"Indeed," Boris Dolokhov said. "They are called the Ragnarok Protocols."  
  
++++  
  
Castle Wulfenbach had been the stronghold of the Wulfenbach Empire. The kilometers-long airship did not need territory for its security. It roamed high above Europa as an unassailable fortress in the sky, with thousands aboard. Now it was trash. The Event had carved a large, irregular chunk out the great dirigible. Only the lucky fact that the fragment had contained one of the lifting gas cells had prevented disaster. It had fallen as gently as a snowflake. Albeit, Gilgamesh conceded, a snowflake of tons of steel that had crushed a great swath of forest fifteen kilometers away from Mechanicsburg. Most had abandoned airship by the ubiquitous balloonchutes stowed along Castle Wulfenbach's corridors.  
  
Teams of Wulfenbach troops and volunteers from the Jaegers had already begun the final rites for his childhood home. Torches and saws cut rings of steel into manageable chunks. Salvage teams brought out equipment and the more tractable experiments. Others scattered about the forest took soil and geological samples. It was more evidence of Father's vision. The Ragnarok Protocols had never been known beyond the inner circle. It would have been a blow to morale for the rest of the Empire to know that Klaus Wulfenbach had intended to abandon Europa in case of a catastrophic disaster. Castle Wulfenbach and the Imperial Fleet had in fact been created to act as a colonization fleet in case, say, a Spark turned Europa into a giant custard.  
  
Cheers rose up when Gil planted the peeled log into the hole. A team of troopers with block and tackle had raised the matching post for the camp gate. Wulfenbach troops were trained to raise field fortifications within hours, to hold ground for an airhead for fleet reinforcement. The ditch and palisade had already been erected. Within, tent and latrine lines were being laid out. In a week there would be wood buildings for everything from barracks to workshops. In a month there would be the rough makings of a town. A Wulfenbach soldier was usually a peasant lad or lass who might do anything from fight monsters to build roads or bring in a harvest. One couldn't ask for a better foundation to re-establish a civilization.  
  
Troopers slapped him on the back as Gil toured the camp. His supervision wasn't necessary. Once given their orders, everyone knew how to do their jobs. But it seemed important that he share in the creation of this place. It was all brand new. All his life, he had been expected to take charge of a Europa always on the verge of chaos. The Baron's Peace had been an uneasy one. Now the Empire was gone. Nothing was settled. It was wonderful. How couldn't he pitch in? What better way to become known to his people. If only his father could see this, he would be proud of what he had instilled in those sworn to his service.  
  
They had found no sign of him.  
  
"Reports from the survey team," Boris said, plucking a message from a unicycle courier. The Russian had shadowed Gil as flocks of messengers attended them. "There is a constant slope from Mechanicsburg to this site."  
  
"Excellent, we'll need the water from the Dyne," Gil said. "Right now it's wasted spilling into the cove. We can blast a channel right down the center of the island if the gradient holds."  
  
"We'll be dependent upon Mechanicsburg for everything from clean water to power for mills," Boris said.  
  
"Agatha's people are mostly townies, aside some peasants who were trapped in the town," Gil replied. "They'll need farmers to supply food, and we need a major town to rely on until we establish our own."  
  
"To be precise, Mechanicsburg," Boris said. "A now-armed stronghold of a family known more for raiding than trade. We lack any heavy weapons or defenses to resist them. We're now effectively their vassals."  
  
"We are not doing this," Gil shot back. "Trust has to start somewhere."  
  
"And reasonable suspicions, Master Gilgamesh?" Boris observed.   
  
"I trust Agatha with my life," Gil replied. "Literally, during the Si Vales. I trust her to fight the Other. I will never do what I did on top of the Castle, with whatever doubts my Father forced in my head."  
  
"I wish I could share your boundless faith in the Lady Heterodyne," Boris said.  
  
"Goodness, I was counting on you to stay cynical," Gil replied. "That was, if she actually does become the Other or turn evil, you'll be able warn me in time."  
  
"'Trust, then verify'." Boris smiled. "Could you at least negotiate for the retention of medium weapons from the wreck?"  
  
"Sure, it would be a confidence boost for the ranks," Gil said. "Not that anything from Mechanicsburg to the other end of the island could survive if the town cut loose, without any mountains in the way. Ho, it'd be an impressive sight."  
  
"Very briefly, Herr Baron."   
  
Hmmm. Yes, the town's defences would need updating to deal with maritime threats. Those cistern-squid would do in the protected environment of Mechanicsburg's new cove; he wasn't sure how well they'd deal with the sea beyond the headlands. It would depend on the coastal geography. Was there a sharp drop-off? Were there shoals and reefs? Mapping the sea would be at least at important as the island. Gil barely noticed the troops around him discreetly scattering as he pulled a notebook out of his pocket. The English were far more advanced than the Empire in maritime sonar. Having Ardsley swept up in the Event would have helped. It would have been useful for someone to interro--consult on the technology. Oh well, Gil could improvise a hydrographic sonar mapping engine with what the Empire had been working on to detect British submarines.  
  
The forest abruptly ended at a cliff six meters above the sea. Surf crashed at the base. Stripping off his shirt, Gil allowed the sea breeze to cool him down. He lounged against a tree a safe distance from the cliff edge, a pencil tapping against his knee. Unless there was a coastal shelf, underwater attack lobsters weren't the best choice. Pity, he had had some designs in mind for a while. Sea urchin mines lodged in the base of the cliff--especially if they could fire their spines--could act as fixed defenses. He should check those Submersibles de Terre that had shown up at the cathedral. Good thing the island's geography made amphibious landings difficult anywhere except Mechanicsburg's new harbor.  
  
He idly sketched a flock of gulls--no telling the species, on an alien world--bobbing on the sea. One flapped up into the air. Gil worked out the glide ratio of its outstretched wings. Huh. One of the problems he had had with his heavier-than-air fliers was the problem of ground take-off. One needed a long enough launching surface hough his hybrid rotary-ornithopter was meant to solve that problem. But _a flier that could take off from the sea would have an effectively infinite take-off area. Nature had already shown the way. You would need more powerful engines to break free of the drag from the water. **Excellent! It would force him to devise a sufficiently light yet energetic engine for that purpose. Fuel? HAH, SEAWEED! METHANOL! A RENEWABLE SOURCE OF FUEL-STOCK THAT COULD DOUBLE AS HABITAT FOR A FISHERY--**_  
  
"Master Gilgamesh! We've found a body!"  
  
"What?" Gil leapt to his feet, seeing Boris standing there wringing all four hands.  
  
"Several kilometers away, beneath a fallen engine," Boris said. "Burned to bones. It is, ah, about the height and build of--"  
  
_Father._  
  
+++++  
  
They came in a solemn procession through the Red Cathedral: Mechanicsburgers, Wulfenbachers, enemies, friends. The crowds filed up the nave to where the coffin was laid out before the great altar. A Wulfenbach trooper and General Khrizan stood as honor guards on either side. Beneath glass lay bones charred by fire and cracked by a great impact. Even reduced to this state, the size and power of the one they had belonged to in life was evident. There were few expressions of extravagant mourning. Everyone seemed to sense he wouldn't have liked that. Some nodded respectfully. Others cracked jokes or told stories. All passed on to give their regards to the young man sitting in the front pew opposite his late father.  
  
Agatha sat several rows back in her Madame Olga disguise. A newly-confirmed Heterodyne entering the Red Cathedral had to undergo unspecified rites. The only way to attend the memorial service without performing them was in cognito. She was not going to turn the day of Klaus Wulfenbach's death into a celebration of her ascension; even the Mechanicsburg elders had agreed they owed the late Baron a day of lying in state before the official festivities. It was all so very awkward, though. Like that cheap gag in a poor Heterodyne farce, where the head-in-the-jar is complaining through its own funeral. She had heard Gil had regained control. But was it Gil there, or Klaus looking out through Gil's eyes?  
  
No wonder everyone acted a little creeped out around her after one of her Lucrezia episodes.  
  
A weight settled onto the pew besider her. Agatha glanced at her new neighbor. He was an older man with a grandfatherly beard and bald head. His uniform was blue with green sashes arranged like an insect's legs; his black silk top hat in his lap bore more green silk and a Wulfenbach badge. Vespiary squad, then. Her excellent memory brought back the chaos of Sturmhalten. She unobtrusively tucked the shawl veiling her hair closer to her face. Sergeant Scorp had seen her as Lucrezia. She doubted he would look kindly upon her. Not that she was in any danger. Violetta was hidden somewhere, and of course her Jaegers unofficially knew where she was. Agatha didn't want a scene. She stayed quiet as the sergeant took a flask out. Saluting Klaus' bone, he glugged a farewell tot before producing a pipe and tobacco pouch.  
  
"Chirrup!"   
  
"Now where'd you come from?" Scorp asked, as her shoulder-weasel leapt atop his hat. He froze when he saw her.  
  
"That would be my cover, being blown," Agatha replied, giving in to the inevitable. "So much for my reputation as 'mistress of diguise'."  
  
"Feelin' yourself, ma'am?" Scorp asked. He calmly tamped down his pipe, lighting a match with a flick of a thumbnail. "Don't mind my presumption. If any house of God can stand a touch of sulfur, it'd be this place."  
  
"Much better than in Sturmhalten," Agatha said. "My houseguest is locked down in the basement."  
  
"Good. Think I prefer your company." Scorp drew on his pipe. "I speak for the ranks that we appreciate this, even though old Klaus would have hated it."  
  
"Not a man for pomp and circumstance?" Agatha said.   
  
"Wasn't close to the man, you understand." Scorp blew a smoke ring. "Still, saw him every so often when the squad went into action I asked once after I'd been in my cups after a bad one. He said he'd prefer we all drink to his memory. And the Empire run a week of Klaus skits by the best Heterodyne Shows in Europa."  
  
"I acted in one myself while I was on the run." Agatha scowled. "Playing her. That's one role I've outgrown."  
  
"Master Gilgamesh explained that." Scorp pondered the embers in his pipe. "Will you be making the lad your vassal?"  
  
"I don't want to rule anyone besides my townspeople," Agatha said. "I'm only claiming a five kilometer frontier from the walls. The rest of the island is yours to settle, as long as it isn't as the Empire."  
  
"I might stay in town, truth be told," Scorp said. "These bones are too old for farmin'. I always did say I'd settle down in by the seaside."  
  
"I'm worried about the Wulfenbachers," Agatha admitted. "I hope they're as accepting as you."  
  
"Some are, some ain't," Scorp said. "You'll find soldiers are a practical bunch. No use fightin' more than you have to, unless you're a young fool. 'Sides, we've been in Mechanicsburg for three days with a new Heterodyne. Our insides ain't been put on our outsides yet."  
  
"The power of low expectations, huh?"  
  
"Take what you can get in this world, wherever it is."  
  
Hours passed until the curate announced the doors were closing for the night. Agatha slipped out a side door. A light rain pattered onto the cobbled street. Her shawl was enough to keep off the worst of the wet. The second she stepped outside, she could sense the subliminal heterodyne hum she had ordered the Castle to resonate everywhere within its reach. It would be enough to hold back mother in case the locket failed. Cocking her head, she looked back at the nightmarish hulk of the cathedral. Very interesting. That implied certain things about the church. She had been meaning to find out more about it. Such as how an official cathedral sanctioned by one of the Vaticans even existed in Mechanicsburg.  
  
She walked deeper into town, away from the Castle. On a quiet street there was a slightly battered home whose ground floor was occupied by two great wooden doors. Above it was a newly-painted sign: "Clay Mechanical". Light shone through the windows on the second storey above. Two figures were locked in an embrace on the balcony with its ornate carved railing overlooking the street. Agatha silently cheered for her newlywed friends from Castle Wulfenbach. A door to one side of the main ones lead up to a room full of laughter and cheer. The only furnishings was a scarred table and some chairs, but the atmosphere was more than cheered by Adam's laughter as he listened to Zeetha. Clatter from the kitchen at the back heralded Lilith's return to the world of canning.  
  
Agatha changed in the spare room behind her foster parents'. She sighed a little at the sparse furnishings. A part of her missed the cosy room she had had in Beetleburg. There were none of the carvings she had done herself here, only a bed and night-table. Buttoning up a white shirtwaist, she smoothed down a green tweed dress that had been hanging on the back of the door. Over it she buckled a leather smith's apron stocked with tools. Kissing Adam on the way, Agatha found the wrought-iron spiral staircase leading down into the workshop.  
  
Arc lamps shone down on one of Gil's falling machines. Fists on her hips, Agatha circled the green insectile monstrosity. Very amusing, with some decidedly intruiging design choices. Gil had even incorporated some of her modifications to his original flyer's design in the engine. Honestly, she didn't understand why Tarvek had screamed that it was a "blasphemous affront to all concepts of sane aerial transport" when the townspeople had brought it to her. Yes, he had fixed a few niggles that cropped up in any untested prototype. But there were definite possibilities. Especially with the giant claw.  
  
A postern in the workshop doors opened. Clawed hands thrust Gilgamesh Wulfenbach inside.  
  
"Heff a nize party, Meester Vulfenbash!"  
  
"Gil?" Agatha asked.  
  
"Um, yes?" Gil scratched his head. "Who else would I be?"  
  
It's him it's him, no one else could be that smart and clueless at the same time--  
  
"I was told the Heterodyne requested my presence for dinner." Gil looked around. "This isn't the castle."  
  
"They're still battling intelligent slime molds in the main ktichens," Agatha said. "Besides, dinner with the Heterodyne is so formal. I'd rather have you visit with Agatha instead."  
  
"It sounds calmer," Gil said. "No offense to your magnificently designed death-trap of a fortress."  
  
"None taken," came a voice in the air. "I'm sure Adam and Lilith will be willing to vacate their bedroom for a few hours."  
  
"No!"  
  
"Mistress, my biological clock is ticking!"  
  
"Silence, you impudent mass of masonry!" Agatha barked.   
  
"I'm not exactly very hungry," Gil said.   
  
"Then you can sit in the corner," Agatha said. "And you can brood and drink beer while your sister annoys you, and Theo and Sleipnir show off their rings, and I can tell you all about my time with the circus."  
  
"Agatha, I thought after what I said up on the roof," Gil said, "that you might want me to stay away for a while."  
  
"Still am miffed about getting in the way of my work," Agatha said. Her expression softened. "Let's leave that alone for tonight, alright? I've been where you are. Being alone is the worst thing."  
  
"I could manage some of that Snail Ale," Gil admitted. He gestured at the falling machine. "And this?"  
  
"Maybe afterward you could show it off to your admiring lady assistant?" Agatha fluttered her eyelashes. "It's the perfect project for us. Get to know each other, like we could have before the Hive Engine activated."  
  
"Getting to know each other. That's an unusual approach." Gil paused. "And...Tarvek?"  
  
"I have feelings." Agatha blushed. "Red fire, he's as good a kisser as you are."  
  
"Oh, and how did the sneak trick that out of you?" Gil asked.  
  
"He said I was beautiful," Agatha said. "Which is crazy. I was covered in grease and smut."  
  
"Of course, I'm an idiot." Gil hung his head. "I always set up these huge stunts to show how I feel, like blowing up those warclanks or melting England to slag, when I should just tell someone how I feel."  
  
"You threatened to destroy England for me?" Agatha tugged at her collar. "Exactly how would you have managed it?"  
  
"It was only a ploy to scare Wooster into bringing you to safety," Gil said.  
  
"Surely you must have some ideas." Agatha bit her lower lip. "I'd love to discuss it after dinner. If you're so inclined."  
  
"I'd enjoy that." Gil offered his arm. "Shall I escort you, Miss Heterodyne?"  
  
"You may, Herr Wulfenbach."


	8. Adjustments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Note: this was written before certain details about Jenka were revealed in the Paris arc.

Rain pattered on cobblestones outside the workshop. The postern had been left ajar to clear out the welding fumes. He sat on a workbench with a jar labeled "degreaser" at hand. He sipped once a minute while he studied the past few hours' handiwork. The central rotor had been removed. The supplementary rotors on the abdomen had been replaced with larger, shrouded proprellers in swiveling nacelles. The four legs of the landing gear had been lopped off in favor of six sturdy insectile clank legs tipped with combination landing skids and tires. There was a slight resemblance to slaver wasp morphology in those, but was closer to his son's style than Lucrezia's. One of Agatha's repliclanks was finishing the modifcations to the ornithopter wings that could lock them into a fixed position for horizontal flight.  
  
He caught one of the tertiary replicating clanks. Fascinating. Her Spark suppressed, she had unconsciously created tools bearing her Spark to work around the locket's hold. It was a cruder, more primal version of the feats Van Rijn had achieved in expression the platonic ideals of his artistry in the Muses. On the workbench was a leather-bound notebook written in Agatha's handwriting: a copy of the Dutch Master's notes she had apparently discovered in a Muse that had been hidden among those carnies. Poor Tarsus would have ripped out the girl's brain for what was now in her memory. Beside the notes was a clank head with stern features hammered out of bronze. Next to it was a sheaf of papers with complex diagrams and instructions, detailing what appeared to be a sarcaphagus topped by the head.  
  
A stunning blow knocked him into the opposite corner of the room. When his head cleared, Klaus saw through blurred vision Doctor Sun Jen-djieh flipping through the assembled notes. The white lab coat and green weskit of the administator of Mechanicsburg's Great Hospital was covered in blood and other fluids. The white miter with its red trilobite was askew. Doctor Sun leafed through the assembled notes. A bit of pride rose in Klaus when Sun grunted in approval at the schematics of the sarcophagus. It was quickly replaced by alarm when the doctor glared at him in a manner that was usually reserved for a recalcitrant patient about to have a bed-rest order enforced.  
  
"You could have damaged the boy's mind beyond salvation," Sun said. He flexed one arm, sleeve rolled up to the bicep. "I can even sympathise why you did it. The Lady Heterodyne was still right. You went too far, Klaus."  
  
"Will you help me, old friend?" Klaus asked.  
  
"Of course, what else do I have to do besides patch you up?" Sun grumbled. "Yes, you stubborn idiot. At least you've given me a new technique to study."  
  
"Thank you," Klaus said. "I've sent instructions to Boris under my son's name to bury my bones in an unmarked grave. The body-snatching guild in Mechanicsburg is excellent. They'll bring you my remains without leaving a trace."  
  
"Does Gilgamesh know?" Sun asked.  
  
"Not consciously." Rubbing his temple, Klaus climbed to his feet. "I don't intend to enlighten him. One more construct wearing a mask won't stand out in Mechanicsburg."  
  
"The Lady Heterodyne banned you from her town," Sun said.  
  
"Just as the Jaegers never officially were here until the Doom Bell rang." Klaus grinned. "Mechanicsburg will become a center of exploration. Another world, Sun. It will almost be like old times with Bill and Barry."  
  
"As long as you do not become involved in politics again," Sun said. "By the Eight Immortals, leave that to younger men!"  
  
"One prescription I will obey," Klaus assured him.  
  
"Good."  
  
Then Sun hit him again.  
  
Klaus blinked his eyes. Or, at least he tried to. There was a decided lack of sensory input. Ah. Nerve strike, followed by a sedative to keep his son's body unconscious as the transferral process was performed. He must be within the cognitive engine he had created as a temporary housing for his mind. Sensations slowly infiltrated into his consciousness: the rumble of pumps, dark-red iight, the disconcerting feeling of having multiple arms. Only Klaus' long practice of dealing with constant interruptions from the Empire's need for supervision prevented his mind from being overwhelmed as dozens of visual units came on line. He saw his skeleton floating a dimly-lit space akin to an artifical womb, clank manipulators tipped with surgical tools emerging from the walls. Beneath what his mind interpreted as phantom hands was a control panel that represented the sarcophagus' functions.   
  
The resurrection process would take months. It had required constant supervision, hampered by the need to eat and deal with outside concerns, during his first attempt to reconstitute what he had believed to be Agatha's skeleton. He had deliberately omitted any input from the outside world. No distractions. The process would be far more complicated due to the composite nature of his body. He wouldn't emerge with stitches from this revivification, but he would have to watch the fusion process very carefully. An inventory appeared in his mind's eye. How nice, the Jaegers had contributed several internal organs. And--my, my, what was this? A small tank of fluid whose galvanic essence potential was off the scale. One of the Lady Heterodyne's gifts, perhaps. Could this be one component in the Jaegerbrau?  
  
He finally had the time and peace to himself.  
  
Finally, he had managed a vacation.  
  
++++  
  
Tarvek followed the maid through Castle Heterodyne, a case of fabric swatches under one arm. Even with the information fed by Tiktoffen, the castle was a complex maze not helped by its ability to re-arrange itself at will. He also suspected that Agatha's ancestral home was far larger within than one might expect from the outside. A guide was essential. The servant was likely the descendent of one of the servants who had died in the explosions. Her surviving family would have ensured she receive the training to serve the Heterodyne when the Doom Bell rang again. Already a skeleton staff bolstered by constructs, clanks, and Der Kestle itself was transforming the Castle from a tattered ruin to the functioning residence and seat of power of a major Europan power. All as if nearly two decades of absence had never happened.  
  
The maid ushered him into a room near Agatha's suite. There was little furniture save for an ornate chess table with tiny clank chess pieces and a bookcase. Tarvek automatically noted the titles: predominantly military history and certain key works on politics. In one corner was a wicker basket emblazoned with a golden wreath akin to that of the Roman Emperors. Although, if his botany was correct, it was modeled on sprigs of _nepeta cataria_ in place of the traditional laurel. Several servants stood at attention around the walls, holding pillows bearing tins of herring and dead rats ready for consumption. A fireplace with gas-flames emerging from a hearth shaped like a dragon warmed the room. Beside in, a white cat wearing a red-and-gold coat that a Parisian brothel doorman might favor lay in the lap of a maid industriously scritching behind one ear. The feline's purrs filled the room. The cat opened one green eye as Tarvek entered.  
  
"Give us some privacy." Krosp the First nodded to the maid. "Excellent work. Full marks. I'll let Agatha know."  
  
"Is m'sieur looking for a new wardrobe?" Tarvek asked, while the cat's staff left. "Some pillows?"  
  
"Maybe an ottoman, right over there," Krosp replied. "Perfect spot for catching the sun."  
  
"To match your--" and here even Tarvek's reserve couldn't prevent a slip "--royal colours?"  
  
"Nah, I'm pretty indifferent to that." Krosp flexed his claws. "It's about texture for me."  
  
"Understood." Tarvek automatically selected samples from his case. "The House of Sturmvoraus does its best to fulfill the needs of its clientele."  
  
"Not sticking with the Storm King act?" Krosp ran his claws along a swatch of twill.   
  
"We're far away from Europa. The title is moot for now," Tarvek said. "For now I'll be content to be a prince in exile."  
  
"I can figure why you wouldn't want to point out you're the heir to Andronicus." Krosp clawed a strip of medium-pile carpet. "Especially in this town. Especially since your family was hip-deep in the Other's plans."  
  
"My father's infatuation with Lucrezia Mongfish lead to the corruption of the Order," Tarvek said. "I hope I can, in some small way, redeem my family's sins helping Agatha."  
  
"This? This is why I like you. Chucking your folks under the omnibus." Krosp laughed. "Might even work if you weren't in a town where they know the real reason the Storm King marries the Heterodyne Girl."  
  
Sweat trickled down Tarvek's spine. The servants were gone. The Castle was listening.  
  
"Revenge." Krosp bared his fangs. "Euphrosynia broke everything Andronicus Valois worked for. To be a real Storm King, you'd have to prove you can marry her successor. Tame her. Make her docile."  
  
"I would never do that to Agatha!" Tarvek clenched his fists. "We're ready to extract Lucrezia. It can be done tomorrow!"  
  
"That's great. It'd look bad, having Agatha still possessed." Krosp frowned. "It doesn't change the real story. Lucrezia didn't corrupt the Knights of Jove. She handed your people the weapon they'd been searching for. I bet there's another compartmentalized faction or three that used Aaronev as their stooge while they figured out how to neutralize Lucrezia."  
  
"The Blitzengaards. Of course." Tarvek smacked his forehead. "Zola and her branch of the Mongfishes must have been in league with them."  
  
"Agatha'll figure it out eventually," Krosp said. "I've been doing my best to train a suspicious streak in her. Smart kid. She might even suspect that it might have been the Knights of Jove who plotted to kill the Heterodyne Boys. Was it chance or Lucrezia being a little sentimental that had them out of town when the explosions kicked off?"  
  
A blast of wind rattled the windowpanes.  
  
Tarvek's shoulders sank in resignation.  
  
"You realize what you're asking me to do?"  
  
"Who do you want, kid? Agatha, or the Heterodyne Girl?" Krosp closed the sample case. "I respect you. We're the same in some ways. And I won't be around for long. My max life-span is maybe thirty five, forty years with Vapnoople's alterations. She'll need someone with our special skills after I'm gone."  
  
"You have a gift, m'sieur," Tarvek said. He bowed. "Perhaps we can try a game of chess some day."  
  
"You'd like this set," Krosp said. "Clemethious is black. Andronicus is white."  
  
"I'm not so sure about that, any more." Tarvek plucked the White King from the chess table. "May I?"  
  
"Be my guest, prince."  
  
The Castle did not immediately kill him the second he stepped into the hall. Encouraging, that. One of the Jaegers was waiting to escort him to the main gate: a hulking green-furred monster with curling ram's horns. It reminded him of a nursery rhyme Anevka had sung to him. What was it? Oh, yes. "The Jaeger Ate Andronicus' Horse". Tarvek quietly whistled it as they headed to the causeway leading to town. The rain was pouring down now. Tarvek flipped up the hood of his storm-cloak against the deluge. He picked his way carefully down the stairs. Now would be about the time Der Kestle would snap them into a chute that would send him sliding down to a nasty surprise. It had happened once during the time when the castle was broken. There had been no survivors among the resupply team that had been bringing that week's provisions.  
  
He reached the bottom without sliding into the retractable circular saw blades. Bracing against the gale, Tarvek braved the storm through the streets of the town. He brought out the Storm King chessman. All white, with a silver crown of stylized lightning bolts. The detail in the tiny coronet was amazing. He gently prized it loose from the little clank's head. He weighed it in his palm. The threat of his rival cousins to the succession wasn't an issue. He could still persuade Agatha to fulfill the prophecy. Tarvek himself could not assume the throne. A child of Heterodyne and Valois, though, with the strength of Mechanicsburg and an alliance with House Wulfenbach? That line could fulfill the promise of the Storm King. Someday, they might find a way to return to Earth. Their descendents would bring the storm against Lucrezia and those who had thought to destroy the Heterodynes. A reformed Kings--or Queens--of the Storm. Surely Agatha would see the value in submitting to that?  
  
Submit.  
  
Tarvek realized where he wandered to in his brooding. Here. Right at this spot, near the Mechanicsburg Museum of Armor. The crashed airship had been removed. The blasted corpse of the wasp-queen was nowhere to be found. Likely eaten as an impromptu barbeque by the Jaegers. She had appeared out of nowhere in that magnificent, barbaric armored suit. She had called the lightning forth from her battle-axe. Saved him, after all he and his family had done to her. He had taken her in his arms then in that one impossibly perfect moment and vowed to fight for her. Tarvek had meant Gil, naturally. Yet, what would his vow mean if he won her in the name of Andronicus Valois?  
  
Agatha. Or the Heterodyne Girl.  
  
He weighed the tiny crown in his hand.  
  
Tipping it, he watched it fall into the gutter. The surging waters carried it down a grate.  
  
Tarvek Sturmvoraus had a proclamation to write.  
  
+++++  
  
Verra interestink.  
  
Jenka clung to de rock vile de sea crashed below. She vas best scout among de brodderhood. Alvways ven a leetle gorl, Jenka ran into de voods to see de secret tings. Den vun day, de Heterodyne had ridden by vit de pack on a hunt. He had challenged leetle Jenka to track de quarry, if she could. Und she did. De brodders took her in, undt ven it vas time she drank madness und death in de name of de Master. She vas both scheaky und sottle und verra good at beink qviet. So it vas Jenka who ranged to de far end of dis island, to dis place of rocks und spires vot petered out vere de land narrowed.  
  
Dere had been a wreck, vunce. Bits und pieces of vood dot vas like cheap airship hull. Scrap ov pot. Strange writink, vot she vunce seen ven a Master vanted a leetle vacation in Cairo. Dot had not been fun. Too much sand, it make her mount sneeze. Coins vit voman and more picture writink. And dis staff. Jenka tapped it. Veird metal. Alloy? Bit like eel or snake-thing. End vas blunt, though ven she schmelled dot end dere was faint trace. Lightnink? Schpark stoff, den. She vould let de Mistress find out vot it vas. Even vitout maybe schparky-staff, dis vas beeg. Dere vos peeple here.   
  
Jenka leapt from rock to rock back to de mainland. She vistled. Fust huffed, coming out of de cave. She mounted de riding-bear. He vot goot bear, even if he vas runt of litter. She tossed a fish dot had been dashed on de rocks to de ground. Vile Fust ate, she fixed de staff beside her scabbard undt de leelte bits in a pouch on her belt. Fust roared ven her heels tickled his ribs. Dere vas thirty-some kilometers do reach Mechanicsburg on the other end of de island. Dere vas no time to vaste.  
  
Jenka had to report.


	9. Invigorating Morning

"Mistress?" Der Kestle asked.  
  
"Mrppphgggl." Agatha pulled the covers over her head.  
  
"Mistress, Princess Zeetha has requested you dress for a training session."  
  
"T'll 'er bg'rrr off."  
  
"Princess Zeetha specifically said to pass along the words 'move it, you slacker'."  
  
"S't 'n sp'n. N't g'tn 'p."  
  
"Tsssk tsssk. After all she's done for you." Der Kestle's tone became positively gleeful. "I must say I was worried she was training you to heroism. But I've decided her work with you does count as being in the best interests in the family."  
  
The mattress beneath Agatha suddenly flipped towards the vertical. She clawed frantically for purchase as she slid down the sheets towards the hard stone floor. A section of which suddenly disappeared at the foot of her bed. She shrieked as she plunged down into a chute. An unseen claw ripped her nightgown off her. With a splash, she was unceremoniously dumped into a swiftly-flowing river. The Dyne? That lead to-- "AIIIIIIEEEEEE!" She was spat out of the dragon's mouth from which the source of the Dyne issued forth as a waterfall. Instinct kicked in quick enough for her to survive the long fall into the great reservoir at the southern flank of Castle Hill. Water boiled around her as she clawed towards the surface. Spluttering, she flailed about as she tried to find her bearings. It wasn't helped by the stick smacking her atop her head. Agatha gazed up in shock at her green-haired _kolee_ in a small rowboat, with Bosun Higgs manning the oars. Zeetha smiled diabolically as she tossed a small spherical object with her free hand.  
  
"Nooooooo," Agatha moaned.  
  
"Yeeeeeeessss," Zeetha hissed back. "Survive one battle and you think you're done? Hah! That's twenty laps fom here to the River Gate in the walls, upstream and downstream, for being late. Hup, hup!"  
  
Agatha whimpered when Zeetha flung the object into the reservoir right behind her.  
  
*BOOOM*  
  
"MEIN GOTT, I'M GOING! I'M GOING!"  
  
"Stroke, stroke!" Zeetha screamed.  
  
Above them, the Castle quietly chuckled to itself.  
  
Impudent mass of masonry, indeed.  
  
+++++  
  
**_Kill Zeetha Kill Zeetha Kill Zeetha Kill--_**  
  
Agatha matched her breastroke to her mental cadence as she headed upstream on the twentieth lap. Her technique had improved dramatically from her first attempts to dog-paddle away from the shower of concussion grenades Zeetha had chosen as motivational aids. Trying to hide underwater had been a debacle involving depth-charges, a fishing net, and an oar applied to her backside. At least the rain had stopped. The waters of the Dyne gleamed from the sun--subtly whiter in the spectrum than Earth's--that had risen above what was nominally the western horizon. At least if north and south on a compass here were anything like home. A flock of Mechanicsburg Omnivorous Ducks paddled beside her, fangs gleaming in their bills. Her subjects shouted encouragement from the banks.  
  
**_KILLZEETHAKILLZEETHAKILLZEETHA--_**  
  
Tiny Monster Island came into view. Halfway there to the end of this torture. Standing on the artificial island between the two halves of the folding bridge was the female Jaeger that had attacked Zum Zum. Dimo had mentioned her name once in passing. Ah, yes: Jenka. Beside her was her massive cavalry-bear dozing in the morning sun. Suddenly, Agatha felt stone stairs rising up from the river bottom. A cloud of wasp-clanks hovered above her bearing a towel. Agatha hesitated only a moment before climbing out of the river. The clanks draped the towel around her as she emerged for some semblance of modesty. Be confident, Krosp had said. Just treat them as if they were her fellow cast-members backstage in the midst of a costume change.  
  
"Hey, did I tell you to stop?" Zeetha shouted from the rowboat. "Another five laps for punishment!"  
  
"Official Heterodyne business!" Agatha shouted back.  
  
"Make it quick, lazybones."  
  
Kill. Zeetha. So hard.  
  
"Please forgive hyu servant for de error ov ZumZum," Jenka said with bowed head. "I surrender my hat to hyu, for dot trespass."  
  
"No harm, no foul," Agatha said, wriggling her fingers. "I did try to blast you with that death ray. Call us even."  
  
"Goot." Donning her hat, the Jaegeress produced several objects from a belt-pouch. "Ve are not alone, Mistress."  
  
"Sweet lightning," Agatha said, gazing in wonder at the coins. Close to pure gold by feel and weight, marked with hieroglyphs. "I've seen script like this before in the antiquities displays in Beetleburg. This is Egyptian!"  
  
"You're kidding." Zeetha easily made a standing jump of several meters from boat to island. "What's that doing way out here?"  
  
"It's a mystery." Agatha danced with glee. "Ha! Not only did we land on an alien planet, there's a civilization out there that might be transplanted from Ancient Earth!"  
  
"Looks like a fertility goddess is big in the local pantheon," Zeetha said, flipping a coin to its obverse side.  
  
"How can you tell?"  
  
"Duh! Ashtara-worshipper." Zeetha pointed to the woman engraved into the gold. "Lotus in one hand, serpent in the other."  
  
"My lady, if you would hold up the coin?," The Castle spoke through a wasp. Mechanical eyes focused on the image. "Accessing the Library. Referring to the Egyptology section. The symbol matches that of Qetesh, Egyptian goddess of sensual pleasure."  
  
"You've memorized the entire library?" Agatha asked.  
  
"Only the catalog. The Library's systems can consult any work in the stacks," Der Kestle said, "and relay the information to the Heterodyne and minions with access privileges."  
  
"I hereby forgive you for that trick you played this morning." Agatha clasped her hands. "And when I have time, we're going to have a chat about all your capabilities."  
  
"Mistress, dere is vun more thing Hy found." Jenka produced a metal staff. "A veapon."  
  
Agatha hefted the two meter-long polearm. Heavy, it weighed twice as much as the average soldier's rifle. The alloy it had been forged from was grey with a bronze undertone. No, not forged. There were no signs of a smith's hammer or tool marks. There were no rivets, bolts, or gaps aside from four depressions in the almond-shaped head. The vaguely serpentine forms of the staff appeared to have been shaped as if in one piece. It like no technology--mundane or Spark--that Agatha had ever seen. Even her mother's Beacon Engine in Sturmhalten had been less alien.  
  
Hairs on the back of her neck rose when that word came to mind.  
  
An atonal hum escaped her while she assessed the staff centimeter by centimeter. She was vaguely aware of a crowd gathering onto the bridge bearing tool boxes and scanning equipment. She automatically accepted a galvanic tester, running it along the shaft. Nothing registered from the head to the purplish crystals set between the four flanges of the butt. Several other tests revealed the same null result. _Interesting. Either the unknown metal was a perfect insulator, or the power source was not detecible by human technology. Although her hand tingled when she passed it over a certain section of the shaft, right below the head. Jenka had said she had "smelled" electricity. The Castle had intimated the Jaeger's transformation was related to the Dyne's source. She had drunk of those waters. Could Jenka's Jaegerish senses and her own sensation be an unanticipated sensitivity to the staff's mechanisms?_  
  
Alien _but clearly fashioned for use by a humaniform creature. The figure on the coin was that of a woman. Suggestive. **Who had brought ancient Egyptians to the world?** If meant to be used by a human, there must be some way to control it. _Agatha held the staff weapon in the assumption the oval-shaped end was the muzzle. _There was no protruding trigger. One operable by downward pressure would risk accidental discharge. **There was a glyph right here. If one pushed and lifted--**_ *SNICK* The smooth ovoid at the end separated into four quarters. Electricity crackled for a single moment in the gaps. Agatha lifted the staff weapon to the sky. **_Two-stage trigger. One push to bring it off safe. Another to fire._** Her thumb pushed the trigger glyph, now raised out if its socket, forward against a slight resistance. A golden bolt flashed into the sky. The air hissed in its passage, accompanied by a slight hint of ozone.  
  
**_A contained plasma bolt. Accelerated and contained by a magnetic field? The ALIEN death ray was far more compact than any ball-lightning projector she had ever read about. Most were at least the size of her first crude energy weapon. One of the wasp clanks hovered thirty meters away._** She shifted her aim at the obliging target. The weapon spat out another bolt. **_Missed. Not surprising, for all its sophistication this device was clumsier than a mundane infantry rifle. No sights. She would have had the same problems with her Doomstick if that weapon hadn't solved the problem of hitting the broad side of a barn by being able to vaporize the entire farmyard. The stylization spoke of a weapon fashioned to impress by its appearance rather than effectiveness. A weapon of terror instead of a weapon of war._**  
  
**_She of course preferred her designs to do both._**  
  
Another bolt.  
  
A third.  
  
BOOOM!  
  
"Expected something a little more impressive," Zeetha commented, as the bolt punched right through the wasp-clank's thorax.  
  
" _ **Perhaps a limited weapon given out to favored subjects as a symbol of authority**_." Agatha turned to Jenka. " ** _Where did you find this?_** "  
  
"A vreck at de odder end ov de island, Mistress," Jenka replied.  
  
**_"Ships in the ancient Egyptian era never strayed far from shore. There is no evidence anywhere that this cove, despite being a perfect harbor, has been used by others. We may be isolated from the main settlements of this planet. That may have been a lost ship blown off course._** "  
  
"What are you going to do?" Zeetha asked.  
  
**_"Continue as planned, although there is a device I should ask Theo about._** " Agatha safed the staff weapon. **_"He mentioned he had brought it from Castle Wulfenbach. There is no reason to panic, of to think anyone on this world means us any harm."_**  
  
"Und if dey do, Mistress?" Jenka said.  
  
" ** _Then we greet them with traditional Heterodyne hospitality. Especially since the lava cannons are fixed. Castle, where are Gil and Tarvek?"_**  
  
"In the square before the Cathedral, my lady."  
  
" ** _Excellent. They'll love this thing! I can't wait to take it apart with them!_** "  
  
"Agatha, shouldn't you--" Zeetha started to say.  
  
**_"DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT MAKING ME DO MORE LAPS. SCIENCE! IS AFOOT!_** "  
  
"Never mind," Zeetha said to Agatha's back, as she ran down the street. "Pretty sure my brother will love to see you."  
  
++++  
  
Gil gazed down on his father's bones. Behind him, he could hear the council whispering among themselves in the pews. Some had questioned why he had decided to meet here instead of the camp. He couldn't tell them what Agatha had mentioned in passing last evening about the lack of connection between the Cathedral and Castle. In fact, this may well be the most secure place on the island. All he could say was that it was right that this decision be rendered before the man they had once followed. It was in a way a return to the creation of the empire: one man coming home to ruins and determining that there would be a new order.  
  
A throat cleared behind him.  
  
"Master Gilgamesh, are you sure?" Boris Dolokhov asked.  
  
"My father created the Empire to keep the peace," Gil said. "It was the best he could create with what he had, but even he knew it was the least of evils. We have a chance to try a new way."  
  
"Fealty to House Wulfenbach is what binds us together," Boris said. "Without it, what are we?"  
  
"All of you have done honour in service to my House. It wasn't the badge you served. It was him."  
  
"Master Gilgamesh, you underestimate yourself--"  
  
"No, I don't. I am not Klaus Wulfenbach." Gil shook his head. "I don't want to be him if I don't have to. Not even he liked the fact that he had to use force to hold together the rampaging construct that was his own Empire."  
  
"VERILY, WE MUST CAST ASIDE THE PILLARS LIKE SAMSON!" came a bellow from the rear pews.  
  
"Excellently put, Doctor Largeham," Gil said. "What I've proposed is nothing more than policies my father wanted to proclaim, yet couldn't because of he limitations of the Baron's Peace. The only change is that I will be serving you."  
  
"Klaus would have wanted to be rid of the feudal system like a shot," Boris observed.  
  
"Heh. Some days he was close to reaching for the machine cannon," Gil said. Laughter echoed about the vaulted ceiling. "Does anyone have any doubts?"  
  
"No, Master Gilgamesh." Boris glanced behind him. "We are all in accord."  
  
"By the authority vested in me as my father's heir," Gilgamesh Wulfenbach said, "I release all of you from service to the Empire and House Wulfenbach. I abdicate as sovereign of the Empire and declare none of my heirs shall inheirit claim to it. All authority and governance of those Imperial subjects on this planet I pass to this council."  
  
"The council in being accepts your proclamation," Boris said, "and humbly requests that Gilgamesh Wulfenbach serve as Chancellor of the Free State of Diaspora for as long as the council or its successors deems worthy to fulfill his duties."  
  
Gil bowed his head as Boris approached with a heavy iron chain. All this had been arranged between them in the hours since he had awoken in one of the tent infirmaries set up on the ruins of the Great Hospital. He would have been a poor student of his father's had he chosen a council to debate such a radical notion that would oppose him. There were few troublemakers left, actually. Most of the troublemakers had been sent in as cannon-fodder in the siege of the town, or killed in battle because a noble officer in a shiny uniform was a perfect target. Still, he covertly scanned the council for any tells of rebellion or disatisfaction when the Chancellor's Chain--fashioned from an airship's mooring chain--was placed around his neck.  
  
One by one, the assembled councillors signed the Instrument of Government he had written in a spate of creativity. It was if a great weight had finally disappeared from his mind. He could actually think clearly for the first time in days. Luckily, Boris had edited out the more unconventional ideas that had been in the original draft. He could introduce them later once his position was secure. Gil solemnly endorsed the Instrument, taking his time for the benefit of the portraitist recording the occasion. He was Mechanicsburg's best forger of artwork and quickest street caricaturist. Everyone clapped politely when he handed the Instrument to Boris for safe-keeping. The forger obligingly copied the signatures of the original onto another version to be posted at the entrance to the Cathedral.  
  
Gil lead them out into the square. The smell of freshly-baked waffles rose from the griddles of the pushcarts he had engaged for the morning. It was his father's recipe, guaranteed to conquer the tastebuds. A puppet show was warming up with several Heterodyne show skits featuring his father in all his fictional comic glory. What Agatha had told him about Sergeant Scorp's words rung true. He snagged a waffle dusted with sugar and loaded with whipped cream. Sitting on the Cathedral's steps, he honored his father's legacy. A series of flashes came from the direction of the river. No alarms, so it must be Agatha having fun with a new death ray. He should join her later.  
  
A small trickle of mourners gathered by the front doors. Gil heard several exclamations of surprise when they read about the new arrangements. Among them was a certain auburn-haired man with weasels poking out of every pocket of his stylish suit. Gil smirked behind his waffle. Tarvek's reaction to the Article Five--"the State shall not issue any title of nobility, nor may any claim privilege based on such a title beyond that accorded to foreign sovereigns"--should be priceless. Sturmvoraus' eyebrows did fly up like a high-altittude dirigible that had emergency-dumped all ballast. Tarvek shook his head in annoyance.  
  
"I wrote that one in especially for you," Gil said.  
  
"A democracy? Really?" Tarvek rolled his eyes. "It's obvious you consorted with the worst radicals in Paris along with the mundane bohemians you fell in with."  
  
"As opposed to the political sophistication of the Fifty Families?" Gil replied. "There's no way I'm leaving you any angle for you to run your Storm King con game on my people."  
  
"That won't be an issue." Tarvek handed him a scroll emblazoned with the Seal of Mechanicsburg. "Agatha's seneschal signed it, along with Mittelmind and Mezzalsalma as witnesses to the event."  
  
"A death certificate?" Gil scowled. "Throwing away titles and honors for the sake of your beloved? That's low, Sturmvoraus.'  
  
"Well, even though he was blatantly angling to ensure he has the only crown," Tarvek said, "Krosp was right. Some of us can't save the girl's family. Honestly, Wulfenbach, live the cliche."  
  
"Pardon--ho, I can't even call you 'prince' now, can I?" Gil brushed crumbs off his pants. "I have things to do, peace to make. Sniping with you is fun. It just isn't exactly high on my list of priorities. Feel free to gloat over my father's body for a plan well-done."  
  
"I never--" Tarvek shook his head. "It's why I am admitting I died and revived in the Si Vales. All my great plans have brought nothing but pain."  
  
"I'm forgiving you, Sturmvoraus," Gil said. "Only because I know you're in Agatha's corner. For her sake--"  
  
"Yes, for her sake." Tarvek nodded. "A truce for the time being. This is her day. We can't make a spectacle that would--"  
  
" _ **HEY GUYS--OH, ARE YOU TWO FIGHTING AGAIN? SWEET LIGHTNING, I MIGHT AS WELL HAVE THE CASTLE FILL A GREASE TRAP WITH NUTELLA AND HAVE YOU FIGHT IT OUT FOR ME IN A PAIR OF LEATHER LOINCLOTHS Like BILL AND BARRY DID IN** Sprocket Wench!_"  
  
Agatha. Towel. Annoyed. Flushed. Big death-ray staff.  
  
Gil's mind crashed like a lead airship.  
  
"Agatha--" Tarvek croaked "You are, ah--"  
  
" ** _YES, MOST AMUSING, AGATHA IS PRANCING AROUND LIKE AN ENGLISHWOMAN AGAIN! WHATEVER, YOU TWO 'PARISIAN SOPHISTICATES' ARE ACTING AS IF YOU'VE NEVER SEEN A WOMAN IN DISHABILLE BEFORE. BY THE WAY, BETTER BRUSH UP ON YOUR ANCIENT EGYPTIAN, TARVEK._** "  
  
"WHAT?" the two men cried out.  
  
" ** _WE FOUND OUT THE MOST AMAZING THING! PRIORITIES FIRST, STRAP ME DOWN ON A SLAB SO YOU CAN RIP MOM OUT OF MY MIND! LET'S GO!"_**


	10. Coronation

"Whatever this death ray's made of, it's tough," Moloch said. "We tried tool steel, diamond saws, even a blowtorch. Nothing made a dent. And that's just on the decorative bits, not the casing.'  
  
"It's spent at least several months in heavy surf without a hint of corrosion." Agatha rubbed her hands. "More of this technology might be under the waves. Time to break out the submersible clanks!"  
  
"We have sub-clanks?" Moloch asked.  
  
"We will soon!"  
  
"Here's Mezzasalma's report on the projector in the head," Moloch said. "I'm not exactly great with paperwork, so I asked him to write it up."  
  
"Yes, I recall our time together on Castle Wulfenbach," Agatha said. "I'll teach you the ropes. Snaug could also tutor you--she's a university-trained minion."  
  
"Ugh. I stayed a mechanic to skip out of paper-pushing." Moloch flipped through his clip-board. "I sent on the lighthouse weapons emplacements schematics to Von Mekkan, since Public Works is town business. He's got a couple of opticians grinding lenses. Sanaa's working on converting those mecha-narwhals to work in water, since she was a pirate queen on one."  
  
"She has command experience? Perfect." Agatha fiddled with the internals of the neurologic register array. "We need an admiral for the maritime fleet. Gil's forces can handle air patrol until we train our own."  
  
"Good to see everything's working out." Moloch coughed into his fist. "You know you're still only wearing a towel, right?"  
  
"Yes. I am." Agatha rubbed a temple. "Good thing Mittelmind can remove memories. All he has to do is apply it to the entire town."  
  
"That's technically evil, Your Nibs."  
  
"Heterodyne. I'm entitled."  
  
Moloch was unfair. She was wearing more than a towel. As if she would work in the lab without gauntlets, goggles, and safety boots! Agatha reviewed the connections for the tenth time as the witnesses filed into the Red Playroom: Mittelmind, the Jaeger-Generals, several Wulfenbach-allied Sparks, Boris Dolokhov, and Gil. She mashed down hard on the urge to hug him. That would send all sorts of mixed messages. She fussed with the containment vessel. Within the burial urn was a Van Rijn cognitive engive. Faint ticks and clicks came from the tiny gears. They had tested the process with a mind transfer which would prove quite the surprise for dear Mother. After all, it wouldn't do for Lucrezia to be all alone in the world.  
  
There. It was time. Stripping off the protective gear--except for the all-important piece of flannel--she sat in the chair. The Boys surrounded her chair while Mittlelmind strapped her down. They had seen the difference between Lucrezia and herself. They would not hesitate to take measures if worst came to worst. Agatha swallowed nervously when she thought of the papers she had put into Vanamonde's care. Permanent death wasn't much less a risk than brain injury. Her body would still be, ah, fertile. As Der Kestle had so delicately put it, every Heterodyne had a duty to family survival. She really, really hoped those contigency plans would prove uneccessary.  
  
The transfer helmet weighed on her head. A strap tightened beneath her jaw.  
  
"Dinner some time next week?" Agatha asked.  
  
"I thought you had reservations with Gil," Tarvek said. His expression appeared almost bored.  
  
"You're in my life," Agatha replied. "However it turns out between Gil and I, you're important to me."  
  
"If all else fails, I can take him two falls out of three." Tarvek permitted a sardonic smile to escape. "Even slathered in hazelnut chocolate spread."  
  
"I like nuts." Yes, mass memory removal had moved up in the priority queue. "I guess that's why I fell for you two."  
  
"Touche."  
  
"Boys, come here." Agatha gestured with one still-free hand. The three Jaegers took a knee before her. "Without your aid, I'd have been lost. I owe so much to you."  
  
"It vas the duty, Mistress," Dimo said. "Undt it vas dumb luck ve found hyu."  
  
"Ov cauze!" Oggie said. "Dere vasn't anyvun dumber den us! De Generals picked de experts for de job."  
  
"Eediot," Dimo said, not unkindly.  
  
"I've been told it is traditional to pick an honor guard from the ranks." Agatha sniffed. They didn't come any more ranker than the Boys. "You will be waiting on the steps of the Red Cathedral as such when I'm finished with Mother."  
  
"Hoo, dis is beeg!" Oggie exclaimed. "Ve--ve may heff to take baths!"  
  
"Hy'm not surprised!" Maxim polished his gauntlet on a lapel. "Ve's respectiffly de schmartest, strongest, undt--dis is critical part--prettiest brodders in de room. No vun could stand against us!"  
  
"Dot's cauze hyu big head make hyu fall over und knock efferyvun down," Dimo snarled, punching the purple Jaeger.  
  
"Hoy! Hyu can't touch de face!"  
  
"Vatch us!" Oggie cried out.  
  
"Ready?" Tarvek asked, as the Boyz squabbled amongst each other. His fingers touched the latch at the nape of her neck  
  
"More than you know." Agatha's knuckles whitened. "Do it."  
  
++++  
  
"Psyche separation achieved!"  
  
Free. She had to break free.  
  
"That's it! _Prepare the transfer--"_  
  
Miserable, disobedient, impudent daughter. When she finally got control she would--  
  
" ** _Throw the switch!_** "  
  
Lucrezia Mongfish screamed in triumph when sensation returned to her consciousness. At last! Now to--  
  
Er.  
  
Where was she?  
  
Lucrezia stared at the great vault supported by pillars emblazoned with skeletal motifs and trilobites. Etched in the walls and floors were the names of fifty generations of Heterodyne dead. The crypt? How had she ended up here? Even her best efforts to find it had been thwarted by the Castle's stubborn refusal to spill its secrets, no matter how much virtual pain she inflicted on the fragment imprisoned in the Muse of Protection's body. Was this some sort of attempt to imprison her within her daughters body in a place where she couldn't escape? Ha. Darlings, she would show them--  
  
\---her fingers traced letters incised into the stone floor--  
  
K-L-A-U-S-B-A-R  
  
"Ahhhhhhh!" Lucrezia screamed, leaping away from the grave of her son.  
  
"I constantly underestimate your daughter," Der Kestle said, its voice redolent with sadistic glee. "Madame, the streak of viciousness you endowed her with adds delightfully to the Heterodyne line. It counterbalances her father's regrettable Goodness."  
  
"You don't dare hurt me!" Lucrezia said. "I possess your precious Heterodyne."  
  
"Do you?"  
  
Lucrezia shuddered.  
  
She traced the outline of her features. Her original features.  
  
Stone ground against itself. A panel flipped open on a pillar. Within was a funerary urn, with slits glowing the characteristic blue of Heterodyne devices.  
  
IN LESS-THAN-BELOVED MEMORY, LUCREZIA MONGFISH  
MOTHER, TRAITRESS, SCUM  
  
Oh, no.  
  
"Oh, yes!" Der Kestle said. The hidden compartment slammed shut. "Your resting place. Insulated from myself so you can't do anything clever. What you are hearing is a fragment of myself copied into your prison to--heh--keep you company."  
  
The stones over her son's grave cracked.  
  
An anguished, maddened baby's cry echoed about the crypt.  
  
"NOOOOOOOOO!" Lucrezia's attempt to flee were arrested by implacable granite hands forming out of the flagstones.  
  
"Centuries of power." Der Kestle whispered in her ear, like a demented lover. "And time here is subjective. A second without could be a millenium within. My wonderfully vindictive lady has given me leave to be creative. Or, at least thoughtfully left no explicit restrictions as to your treatment."  
  
A horror emerged from the grave.  
  
A skeletal childlike hand gripped a scalpel.  
  
"Let's start with the eyelids. I don't want you to miss a thing."  
  
++++  
  
Glorious.  
  
Agatha sat on the roof with an arm about a lightning-collector. The sun was just dipping below the eastern horizon. Already the planet's ring could be seen as a ghostly arch crossing the sky. She could see several of the neighboring islands of the archipelago from this height. Most were small, with a larger one to the southwest just in view. Far below was her town. Tiny dolls lined the streets leading to the Red Cathedral with torches--but not pitchforks--in hand. When the ceremony was done, they'd perform a quaint torchlit parade singing folk-songs.  
  
She stood up. A stiff breeze blew back the rifle-green greatcoat. She wore the brigandine corset over her blouse this time. She had taken a liking to the outfit she been in when confronting Klaus Wulfenbach; the only additions were fingerless leather gauntlets and a pair of goggles. The locket was still at her throat. Perhaps she could have put it aside as a symbol of her triumph over her mother. But it was also the last she had of her Uncle Barry. It might have given her a life of pain and humiliation. It was also his best attempt to hide her and keep her alive. It was everything that she had overcome and would overcome. The slight pressure it placed on her mind slowed down some of her more manic moments.  
  
And, just in case her mother did find a way out of the containment device...well, it paid to have a contingency plan.  
  
Agatha jumped the moment the sun disappeared. Running down the roof, she triggered her Doomstick at the top of the arc. Lightning arched from the ionization engines to the tip of the staff. A multi-colored aurora blasted into the air in a display that reached into the heavens. Fiery angels circled her as Torchmen created an escort. Two grasped her Doomstick, slowing her fall, as she descended to the square before the Cathedral. Boot soles hit the cobbles with a sharp report. Absorbing the impact, Agatha straightened with the Doomstick's display still coruscating into the air. She pumped her fist at the wild applause.  
  
Hah. Thank you, Master Payne, for a graduate course in the dramatic arts.  
  
Unconsciously, she swung her hips as she marched to the Cathedral's doors. Dimo, Oggie, and Maxim flanked her on each side and behind. She smacked the butt of the staff in time with the cadence, a five meter high Northern Lights flaring up with each impact. Her friends waiting on the steps: Zeetha, Violetta, Theo, Sleipnir, and Gil and Tarvek. Grinning, she offered both arms to the two men. Gil took her right arm. Tarvek naturally enough graviatated to the sinister side. The great doors creaked open.  
  
The future lay before her.  
  
++++  
  
Curious.  
  
Qetesh plucked a grape from a handmaiden's bowl. She had never seen such a phenomenon from that direction. It came from the islands far to the north of this world's capital. She had never bothered to settle them. She should spread the word among her priests that it was a display of the goddess' power. The primitives she ruled over would accept it without question. Savoring the fruit, she settled down on the couch to enjoy the cool breeze over her naked body. Qetesh could dimly sense her host howling in fury at its impotence. Foolish human. Its body was for a goddess to command. Not to mention enjoy, especially with the servants both male and female who had been chosen for the night's orgy.  
  
Her First Prime entered the room with grim news. Damn Ba'al. Another border raid. Now she would have to cut short her time on this, the jewel among her territories. It lay outside the main body of the galaxy, distant from any rival System Lord's. So secure was it that she did not bother even stationing death gliders in the system. They were needed in her realm within the galaxy proper. A small contingent of Jaffa sent through the Chapp'ai every so often and the priesthood that enforced her cult was enough to ensure the population's loyalty.  
  
Ah well. She would leave in time.  
  
Qetesh devoted herself to her pleasures, utterly secure in her position as goddess.


	11. Land of Counterpane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten years later....

This was pretty damn awesome.  
  
Ten years ago, Moloch would have laughed if a carnival fortune teller would have predicted that he'd be standing on a chunk of solid diamond orbiting an alien planet. That or ran screaming into the night. Now he was here on looking down on the world that had been his home for a decade. Thousands of kilometers below was the southern continent that ran from polar ice cap to the edge of the Equatorial Ocean. It was a clear day over the Lands of the Goddess. He could see the vast territories of green fields and forests watered by the four rivers that ran down to the sea. Valar, Natash, and Memphet lay at the mouths of the three smaller rivers. Qetesh's Jewel was farther up the Great River, at the spot where it broadened out from Nile-sized to can't-see-either-bank-from-the-middle. Just beyond the edge of the great bay the natives called "the Goblet" was home: the Diasporan Archipelago. Mechanicsburg was right in the center of the southern cluster of islands.  
  
The larger part of his brain that wasn't sight-seeing handed Agatha one tool after another. He had practised in the water tank lots of times for orbital work. It was still fiddly keeping little bits from floating away into space. That would be bad. Agatha had explained how hard a stray bolt could hit at orbital speeds. Moloch did not want the humiliation of being blasted apart by something he'd let fly on a previous mission. It was tougher because he had insisted on the bulky Mark I vacuum suit, adapted from a deep-sea diving armor. No problem. Moloch loved lots of thick, tough material between his skin and space. He wasn't getting into the skintight number Sturmvoraus had designed for Her Nibs. Dyed red and gold, several layers of rubberized nyar-spider silk clung to every curve of the Heterodyne's body in a way that left very little to the imagination. Good thing he'd been desensitized early about seeing her in next to nothing.  
  
Sound didn't travel through space. Moloch could still hear Her Nibs heterodyning through the communications wire in the umbilical tethering them to the diamond. Through the fishbowl helmet, he could see her slightly crazy-but-not-over-the-edge expression that told him she wasn't converting the thing to a ground-to-orbit weapon. Probably. Maybe. Her hair was bound up in an encircling braid to keep it out of the way. She hadn't aged all that much since they'd met. Face a little more defined, a little less soft than when she'd been a teenager. It was the confidence that made all the difference. Nothing of the awkward, scared girl that he had seen in that Beetleburg alley. Him? Mostly a little fatter and a lot more grey hairs. Agatha adjusted one final part before closing the access panel. She grinned when the lights shone green all across the board.  
  
"And done. Great work, Moloch," Agatha said. "The power tap is within nominal parameters."  
  
"So the ring's a huge solar power rig?" Moloch asked. He carefully stowed away all the tools.  
  
"I think it's actually a huge artwork," Agatha said. "Absorbing solar energy was the most efficient method to power whatever mechanisms buried in the crystals that keep them in perfect geostationary orbit despite outside pertubations."  
  
"I'll load up the explosives for the next trip!"  
  
"What? This is an irreplacable piece of alien culture!" she said. "How dare you suggest I'd ruin it to find out _how they can manipulate gravity without any reaction mass. The material is tough but not impervious to a properly-constructed boring machine--"_  
  
"Heh. Called it." Moloch smirked when she face-helmeted. "This goddess must be one powerful Spark to create this."  
  
"I'm not sure she did." Agatha stroked the diamond. "Yes, the Qeteshans say she placed the ring in the sky. But this sort of engineering seems orders of magnitude more complex than even that plasma-staff we found."  
  
"Yeah, well, whoever stuck it up here saved us some trouble," Moloch said. "Saved us the trouble of station keeping. This wireless relay is better than those tethered balloons we've been using for long-distance communications."  
  
"Not to mention we can beam down power to a receiving station, as long we don't drain too much. This one crystal stores enough energy to run the Archipelago's industries for a year."  
  
"Turned it into a doomsday weapon, didn't you?"  
  
"Not right now, although with a few admittedly minor adjustments--"  
  
So much for that bet. Disengaging the tether, they maneuevered back to the Celestial Ascent Engine using compressed air jets in their boots and backpacks. The orbiter was a streamlined steel torpedo with four fins at the rear and a pair of stubby wings near the top. The nose cone was covered with a huge Heterodyne sigil--a heat shield made from a lucky failure in gingerbread baking. In other words, a glide bomb. Cheery thought as long as you ignored the fact you would be right where the warhead would have been. Moloch stuck his fingers into his symbolic ears and chanted "lalalalalala" whenever the mental screams of terror got too loud. They went through the open cargo bay doors. Since the bay was unpressurized, they had to go one after the other through the airlock after making sure the doors were secured. The combination living quarters and cockpit in front was cozy, with wood panelling and brass to trick you into thinking it was just an airship cabin.  
  
They strapped themselves into the couches that were both pilot seats and beds. Moloch bit down a whimper while Her Nibs used the ship's thrusters to prepare it for reentry. He had never gotten used to doing a shooting star impression during the suborbital and low-orbital test flights. The only consolation was that launch didn't involve sitting on top of several thousand kilograms of high explosive. The rocket engine she'd come up with was just as mad: buried in the guts of the bell-shaped nozzle in back was a plug of rubber impregnated with a hell's brew of chemicals. A ground-based lightning cannon on the launch pad vaporized the rubber into plasma, shoving them into orbit. Of course, you were one short circuit away from being cored like an apple the entire ride. But if there was one technology Her Nibs had down solid, it was death rays.  
  
Uh.  
  
Maybe he should get out and check the communications relay one last time for minor adjustments--  
  
He was shoved into his couch when Agatha fired the on-board galvanic guns in the engine, beginning the retro-burn.  
  
Too late.  
  
+++++  
  
"Next time we leave Zinzer on the ground," Gilgamesh said, caressing her. "This would be spectacular in micro-gravity."  
  
"I'd never have time to do any work," Agatha replied, smacking his hand away. "Bad enough you rip off my suit every time. These aren't supposed to be disposable!"  
  
"Every time you come back, it's like a gift." Gilgamesh leered. "And I do love unwrapping presents."  
  
"Letch." Agatha smacked him on his bottom. "Next time I'm disabling the auto-pilot so I can have some peace for once."  
  
It was an idle threat, as usual. Agatha sighed happily as, jerking on his trousers, her consort climbed up through the hatch into the access tunnel leading to the retrieval plane's cockpit. All around the Celestial Ascend Engine's cargo bay were the scraps that remained of her other consort's sartorial genius. Tarvek always grumbled about that. But then, it meant that he could have his fun during the fitting sessions. She basked in an afterglow that eclipsed that which had bathed the heat shield in a fiery corona during reentry. It had been blown free after they were safely in the atmosphere. Light streamed through the glass panels held together by four steel strips that met at the apex of the nose-cone. It provided a spectacular view while she flew the spaceship in a glide path to a waiting Gil.  
  
The catamaran flying boat's twin piscine hulls were tipped with contra-rotating propellers that took full advantage of the engines Gil had designed. After she had optimized them, as usual. They produced enough power that the aircraft could match the CAE's final descent velocity to close a pair of capture-collars just before and behind the fins and canards, respectively. Otherwise it meant dropping into the huge spider's web Mezzalsama had created as a back-up, and Moloch had sworn to actually go through with choking her the only time it had been used. Well, they'd had to test it out, hadn't they? Stretching languidly, Agatha slipped into the flight engineer's overalls Consort One had thoughtfully left behind for her. Also created by Consort Two to fit rather well. Hmmmmphh. They were clearly engaging in a terrible conspiracy, the two perverts.  
  
A flash through the cockpit windows. Agatha peered down at the island that had just flown over. Ah, the war with Doctor Formica. Around the island was a flotilla of amphibious assault ships and carriers launching flitterbugs on close air support missions. Jaegers swarmed over the island to the peak dominated by a brooding castle. Death rays, clanks, and constructs battled in a terrible display of firepower. Agatha nodded. Nice to see them having fun. She had found that keeping her sworn Sparks occupied with public works and other projects only went so far. Every so often, their internal clockworks decided to go cuckoo. It had been an annoyance until she realized that a good fight was what was needed to keep the Jaegers happy. There were several Fortresses of Doom built on isolated islands whenever one of her Sparks decided he needed to rebel a little. They could scream defiance against her tyranny, the Jaegers and Othar got an outing, and her arsenal had regular live-fire tests. An unspoken code of honour ensured that the worst injuries were maimings that could be cleared up by herself or Doctor Sun.  
  
Wriggling through the tunnel, Agatha emerged into the cockpit at the front of the central fuselage of the twin-engined aircraft. Moloch had passed out on a fold-out couch. Gil was in the pilot's seat wearing only boots and flying breeches. Honestly, he was incorrigible. Agatha grinned. Not that she complained all that much. She took the co-pilot's seat as they entered the archipelago's airspace. Cargo dirigibles and flying boats filled the skies; ships both steam and sail plied the waters. A Qeteshan galley bearing the Memphetian ensign was being inspected by a mecha-narwhal corvette on customs duty. As the plane banked, Agatha saw Trilobite Island below the starboard wing. The Dyne River was a bright ribbon that flowed from the defensive lake-and-moat at the eastern gate. A stone causeway crossed the water barrier. A three-car train moved along the galvanic-railway tracks between the lanes meant for foot and cart traffic. The Dyne and tracks wound through a landscape of small farms set amid the forests to the thriving town of Haven, the Diasporan capital. The combined park and airship landing grounds were at the center of a settlement that was approaching Mechanicsburg in size.  
  
Nothing could rival her home town in her heart, though. Agatha thrilled when her ancestral home came into view. She had done a little re-arranging the first year of rule: changing the Dyne to run through a new channel to the eastern gate, building the great stone docks where there had once been only a shingle beach, and the lake. She had decided she had liked the original winding street plan. Gil buzzed the Castle with his usual panache. She pressed her face to the window when she saw the Experiments waving from a tower. So they had managed to escape the iron cages again. Judith had her strawberry blonde hair, Lars had Gil's messy brown mop, while Damien had inheirited the Valois auburn hue. All of them shared features that were a little bit of hers and her consorts. They'd never established exactly whose child was precisely whose. That was to be expected when your sentient castle had a servant slip fertility potions along with a mixture of coffee and Dyne water into your evening night-cap.  
  
That night seven years ago with her and her consorts had been a blur. Fun, but a blur.  
  
The flying boat kissed the sea outside the headlands. A steam launch approached to tow them in.  
  
Great to be home.  
  
++++  
  
_Thirty years ago:_  
  
"We've got to go!"  
  
"Sir, the timing has to be exact. Just a few more seconds."  
  
"It's going to be have to be close enough! Go!"  
  
_In this cluster of timelines, the wormhole formed in the year of 1969 by local reckoning is almost always curved through space-time by a solar flare. The four individuals flung through the energy stream end up on back where they started. However, in this single timeline, a metaphorical mimmoth in the form of a chance hyperspace anomaly cuts the wormhole free of the destination gate. In a Planck's length of time it whips like a snake through time and space. It finds a new anchor the intended thirty years of time...but definitely not in the point the travelers were expecting._  
  
_Now, a few days from when a certain flying boat lands:_  
  
"Auntie Em? Auntie Em?"  
  
*SNICK*  
  
Colonel Jack O'Neill looked up into the opened business ends of several staff weapons.  
  
"Ah, crap."


	12. Intruigues

Beware change, the Goddess had commanded.  
  
Khefu shook his head at the Natashi ship rowing past the Palace of the Goddess. Xebecs, they were called. With oars and triangular sails, they were far faster and sailed better than the barges and simpler square-rigged galleys that plied the Great River. It was a sign the trading cities of the Goblet were courting heresy. The Heri-tep aa'a sepat of the cities had always had a more independent turn of mind than the great lords who ruled along the Great River and its tributaries. Qetesh's Jewel could not dominate them as it could the others. No action had been taken as they had always accorded tribute and love to the Goddess. Indeed, the Goddess had been pleased by the tribute that the priesthood had received in the past five years. Fine garments of a new fabric called silk, the wondrous khafe beans that were worth thrice their weight in gold, and all manner of luxuries had been sent to Her coffers and through the Gate of Heaven.  
  
But now there were worrying developments. Foundries in Valar had learned new methods of purifying iron in great crucibles being fed air. Had not the Goddess commanded that steel was a metal for nobles? Bronze and lesser metals were best for those who toiled in Her fields and towns. Yet there were tales of common farmers using steel ploughs. Worse was what his priests had seized from another galley a week ago. Khefu stared at the toothed-wheels and springs within the mechanism. A clock? Was not the sundial enough, to count the hours by the sun that traveled across the sky by Her command? There were even reports of farmers and slaves running away from the other sepat to the cities. Not good. It betrayed the harmony of the divine order of society, and the other heri-tep were grumbling. He had heard nothing from the priests of the cities or the Companions of Qetesh. Clearly the greedy nobles of the Goblet cities had suborned the priesthood.  
  
A sharp lesson would need to be taught. The Goddess' warriors would have to be summoned. Phantom testicles that had not existed since the cutting that had turned him from boy to novice priest rose to his gorge. She would not be happy. There would be pain for him. Khefu grimaced. He had felt Her lash once as an acolyte for a minor failing. As High Priest, his punishment would be proportionately greater. He reached for a papyrus scroll to draft orders, only to bump into soft fur. Ah. The noble cat who had adopted him. Like its kind, it delighted in lying down on whatever scroll one needed at the moment. It was a handsome white-furred beast with green eyes that had become a favorite among Qetesh's Handmaidens. For whatever reason it had taken a liking to him as well.  
  
It leapt away. Another scroll rolled into the center of the desk. It was a petition from one Olga of Memphet to visit the Chappa'ai on pilgrimage. Hmmmph. Well, all the proper attestations and bribes had been paid according to the notes by a series of lower-ranked priests. Quite handsomely, too. A sack of choice khafe beans had been apportioned for his use. It was as it should be. The poor were granted visitation to the Gate of Heaven by lot. The noble and wealthy paid well for private meditations as befit their obligations to Qetesh. Khefu stamped the petition with his seal. Memphet and her sister cities had not openly breached the Goddess' peace. It would be a signal to them if he began refusing such requests. Best the first warning they had of their error was the sight of ships with Jaffa aboard coming into their harbours.  
  
Such a pity.  
  
++++  
  
One of the hoariest jokes among the contenders for the throne of the Storm King was vowing to throw it all away to run a shop in Paris. As if a claimant to the legacy of Andronicus Valois would become anything so gauche as a tradesman. Ah, how far he had fallen. Tarvek's small tailor's shop had become a boutique occupying the entire block. Frosted glass shielded the customers from the hot sun. There was no need to put his wares on display to the passerby on the streets. Heavens, he wasn't hawking snails from a street cart. The cog-and-sword traced in gold on the windows and above the door was advertisement enough. Beneath whirling ceiling fans were what he called his confections: a single bolts of cloth, an exquisite piece of jewelery, a mannequin posed just so in an outfit that unified Europan and Ancient Egyptian styles.  
  
His customers never saw the recording devices hidden in the displays. Nor did they notice how attentive his staff of shopgirls and male attendants were. Former victims of the Qeteshi slave trade, they would do anything for the liberators who manumitted them when they arrived at what they thought would be yet another place of bondage. Tarvek hand-picked the most promising recruits for his own unique course in retail. What better way to cater to the needs of his clientele than to have eyes and ears in their homes and businesses? Silent, discreet service was the watchword of the House of Sturmvoraus. The Qeteshi priesthood's surveillance apparat in the Goblet had been the subject of several special deliveries. Tarvek believed the former--and late--priests would have approved his redesign of their temples after more tractable religious authorities had been eased into place.  
  
Lounging in an artfully casual cream linen-silk morning suit, Tarvek stared into the empty space above the table in the semi-private nook where he received his clientele. Specially-treated lenses in his pince-nez shifted the frequencies of the holographic display concealed in the table's base to visible wavelengths. A further layer of encoding in the data fed false facts to any clever onlookers. Seeing past the encryption, he studied the real-time intelligence abstracts compiled from all manner of sources. A subvocalized command highlighted data from the extensive trade/espionage networks on the mainland. The great lords of the sepats above the capital would be most surprised how well he knew the local markets. His staff were prized as excellent servants by the elite slave-dealers who had no idea what they were selling. Hovering above the mass of data were the stylized porcelain masks of the Sibyls: Pythia, Cassandra, and Phrygia. The Muse-class intelligences of his oracles chanted couplets as they performed their own analyses. Tarvek betrayed nothing as he and the oracles came to the same conclusion.  
  
Their luck had run out.  
  
"Incoming transmission," Pythia said through the bone-conduction disk hidden behind one ear. "Agent in the palace reporting."  
  
"I am not an 'agent'," Krosp hissed over the wireless link. "I'm here on a personal reconnaissance."  
  
"Ave imperator," Tarvek said. "So it is done?"  
  
"Khefu bought it," Krosp said. "Agatha had better visit quick. He's planning on moving against our allies. Best guess is we finally see Qetesh's warriors in action inside of a month."  
  
"That confirms the worst-case projections," Tarvek said. "Do you think we will see the goddess herself arrive?"  
  
"No idea. She seems to come and go at random," Krosp said. The cat purred. "Ooooh, yeah. Perfect. They condition these handmaidens of hers really well. These girls I'll miss."  
  
"Are you reporting from the lap of her servants?" Tarvek started. "Have you no idea of operational security?"  
  
"Nefertiti here's convinced that I'm a messenger from her boss," Krosp said. "I also convinced her Rumanian is the divine language. She can't understand a thing we're saying."  
  
"Please don't bring back any souvenirs," Tarvek said.  
  
"Maybe I can hire her when Agatha finally gets around to conquering this place," Krosp said. "You know, all the tricks this Qetesh uses to convince her subjects she's a goddess could be pretty easily faked. Agatha puts on her Lucrezia act with some flashing eyes and a voice box--"  
  
"I'd never suggest it, and she would never do it," Tarvek said. "It would destroy all the work she's done proving that she isn't infected by her mother!"  
  
"Good. I was a little worried you might be tempted to pull a Zola," Krosp said. "These folks finding out it was a scam would almost as messy as trying a fake Heterodyne claim in Mechanicsburg."  
  
"We wouid all like to avoid a starting a religious crusade with the millions-strong empire who includes our best trading partners."  
  
"Good luck on that. This is going to be messy," Krosp said. "Let me know when it's time for the extraction. Take your time, though. Another sardine, Nefertiti? Don't mind if I do."  
  
Tarvek mulled over the irony of escaping one hostile empire to land on the doorstep of another. Not that the empire on this planet could put up any credible opposition if Agatha and Gil decided to take the mainland. A late Bronze Age civilization had no defense against the likes of the Heterodyne or Diasporan forces. It needn't even need to be done directly. He had several plans to goad the Goblet cities into an alliance that would assault the capital. Qetesh's Jewel was the key. Take it, and one dominated most of the Great River's watershed. Qetesh herself was beloved. But the priesthood was not. Doubtless a deliberate strategy on the goddess' part, to ensure the eunuch priesthood was reliant on her favor. Really, the society Qetesh had fashioned was a marvel of stability. Unless a new factor entered the scene who represented an existential threat to the tributary-state that controlled the humans on the planet.  
  
Crusades could be just as ugly as the Long War. And that was without one side being able to call upon divine might not be metaphorical.  
  
A counter in the corner of the display blinked twice. Tarvek dismissed the display with a flick of a finger. Taking his hat, he ventured out into the heat of summer on Trilobite Island. Agatha's home now had a climate akin to Malta's. Quite pleasant in morning hours such as this, but Mechanicsburgers and Diasporans had adopted the Latin custom of siesta after a year. His pince-nez polarized to fend off the glare. The cloaked female forms of his Sibyls drifted behind him, ready to impart emergency intelligence that required his attention. He sauntered through the streets of Mechanicsburg with the casual aloofness of a _flaneur_. It wouldn't do to rush. Dignity and style must be maintained. He had to arrive at the dock at the exact moment.  
  
Mechanicsburg teemed with the hustle and bustle of a great trading city. Mercenary Goblet traders, kilted sailors, and Europans milled about in the age-old dance of trying to fleece one another. The Mechanicsburgers always ended up with the biggest pile of wool. A centaur-construct girl drew a cart laden with sacks of precious coffee beans from the plantations on Galilee Island to the north. Two Qeteshi traders shared a hubble-bubble pipe of hashish on a streetwalk terrace. It had been another popular export until the mainlanders had learned to grow their own hemp. A parade of Qetesh worshippers chanted and danced in very brief clothing as Doctor Yglyn lead the procession bearing a crosier topped with an ankh. The woman had all dyed their hair a certain shade of strawberry-blonde.  
  
Agatha would never claim to be the goddess. But a word in the curate's ear about symbolism wouldn't hurt, would it?  
  
Tarvek slipped through a side-street to the walls. He had a knack for knowing where the Sneaky Gate would appear. He emerged in between two warehouses on the other side. Whistling nonchalantly, he headed for the naval docks on the north side of the harbour. The Jaeger lounching by the gate tipped his hat to him as he went through. Seaplanes and cruisers were berthed here. The submarine fleet was concealed in pens beneath the town that connected to submerged tunnels. Tarvek's foot hit the dock just as Gil's flying abomination bumped against the rubber tenders.  
  
"Tarvek!" Agatha bounded into his arms. "You should have seen it! We all should go together next time!"  
  
"Don't bother, he'd sweat hard enough to wrinkle his ascot." Gill stepped out, bare-chested. "And we can't have that."  
  
"He's ravished you shamelessly, hasn't he?" Tarvek said, brushing her mussed hair out of her eyes. "My poor Heterodyne, let me take you away from this brute. We can talk about your adventures while I soothe your shattered nerves with a bath laced with fragrant oils."  
  
"Oh help, Gil," Agatha said, lips curving. "He's planning on seducing me using soap drugged with subtle hypnotic potions."  
  
"You want me to toss him into the drink?" Gil grinned ferally. "Too bad you didn't pack your bathing suit."  
  
"Quick-drying and wrinkle-proof," Tarvek said. "My latest weave. In any case, you have things at Haven to deal with.'  
  
"I didn't hear anything on the wireless," Agatha said.  
  
"No, his people don't know about it yet." Tarvek consulted his pocket watch. "But in ten, nine, eight--"  
  
"And here comes Boris," Gil observed. "Duty calls for now. Dinner tonight?"  
  
"Yes, we have the upcoming diplomatic visit to discuss," Tarvek said.  
  
"Ah. Of course." Agatha nodded. Then she smirked. "Then I can have that bath...with the two of you."  
  
"Dibs on her front!" Tarvek and Gil chorused at the same time.  
  
"I'll decide after a suitable contest," Agatha replied.  
  
Whatever else, it was so good to be him right now.  
  
+++++  
  
"Don't be a baby, Damien. Get on."  
  
"I'm not a baby, Lars. And we haven't field tested it yet! You know what Momma says!"  
  
"You are too the baby! You're a whole ten seconds younger! Isn't he, Judith?"  
  
"Who cares? Release de mechanikul roller-skatink giraffe!"  
  
"Heterodynes can't be Jaegers."  
  
"Ken too, hyu leetle dumbkoff! Hy'm gonna be general some day!"  
  
"So, you coming, Damien? Or you gonna be a big chicken-house? Buck-buck-buckaw!"  
  
"Am not! I'll show you all! Both of you!"  
  
"Yay!"


	13. Child Care

Tap. Tap. Tap.  
  
The Experiments huddled together in the iron cage as Madame Otillia placed it before Momma and the Daddies. Judith's fake fangs were still buried on one of their nanny's forelegs after she'd tried to chew her way to freedom. Damien's livid handprints around Lars' throat were matched by the two black eyes his brother had given him. Now, the trio of six-year olds calculated Momma's mood by the tempo of her tapping foot. Daddy Gil was obviously really angry. His face was squeezed up like he'd bitten into a lemon, and his sides were shaking like the walls of a lab just before it blew up. Daddy Tarvek hid his face behind his hands. Momma just stood there with arms crossed over her chest while Vanamonde handed her a report of the damage. The Experiments rapidly calculated the costs of a shattered watermelon stall, an upended cart of coffee beans, and a mimmoth stampede. They cowered at coming to the same conclusion within milliseconds of each other: EEEEEEEP!  
  
A charred paper banner fluttered down to the ground.  
  
Picking it up, Momma read what the Experiments had written on it: "WELCOME HO--"  
  
Momma's smile and hugs when she had the cage opened made everything worth it.  
  
++++  
  
"Was I this bad as a kid?" Agatha asked. "Outside of locket-related disasters, I mean."  
  
"'Princess Stompy Boots demands pudding, or there will be retribution!'" Lilith said.  
  
"Flour footprints all over the kitchen walls and ceiling," Adam added.  
  
"Drat, that means I can't blame this all on Gil's influence." Agatha sewed up the roller-skating giraffe. "There. All fixed, with a little extra mother's touch. Off you go, Gerrold."  
  
"I am a vision of beauty and grace!"  
  
"I swear, when they finally do break through," Agatha said, as Gerrold skated over the toybox, "they'll probably take out one of the towers. And I'll likely be gallivanting about somewhere else."  
  
"You've always been there when they've needed you," Adam said. "No one is expecting you to raise them by yourself while also being the Heterodyne."  
  
"And your 'gallivanting' is what they look up to," Lilith said.  
  
"Although it also appears to inspire them to more mischief," Agatha said. "There's no winning here, is there?"  
  
"Welcome to motherhood, dear," Lilith said.  
  
At least Agatha could say with complete certainty that she was a better mom than Lucrezia. Not that that was such a high bar to vault. She picked her way through an obstacle course of toys, tools, and half-built siege weapons to the Experiment's bed. Intended to be three, her kids had had them shoved together to form one big plotting den for their next exploit. They lay tangled up after an exhausting few hours fixing the damage they'd caused. Judith's singed shako was clutched in one arm. The other hugged Damien close in a fiercely protective embrace. Lars curled up against her back muttering about catching more "mad air". Several drawings scattered about them announced a new project involving a demented array of ramps and rails.  
  
Agatha gently opened the front of Judith's trilobite locket with a pass-key. With a probe, she adjusted a tiny screw at the base of a miniature tuning fork. Her daughter's forehead wrinkled in discomfort for a few moments. It had to be done. All three of her chidren had begun heterodyning last Christmas. Even the Castle had been concerned, despite centuries of shepherding family through breakthroughs with what it euphamistically called a minimal rate of wastage. Agatha silently mouthed apologies to them while Judith's mind accomodated the new suppression levels. The original locket's design had been refined to produce only enough dampening to fend off a catastrophic outburst. It still felt a bit dirty.  
  
A scrapbook had been left open on the covers. The letters pasted within were long missives about exploring the far corners of Qetesh's realm. Detailed sketches vividly captured scenes both exotic and mundane. Agatha tucked it into a nearby bookshelf. He had disguised his handwriting, but Gil might still guess if he saw Klaus' artistic style in the drawings. That was going to cost her one of these days. If she could go back in time--without awakening eldritch horrors beyond reality--then she'd smack herself for being such a self-righteous nit. There had been a rapprochement over the years. But now it would be complicated for him to come out into the open now. Explaining her part in keeping the secret? Not fun at all.  
  
They'd have to talk about that in a few days.  
  
Servants and supplicants fluttered around her the moment she stepped outside the nursery. Agatha had laid down certain hard-and-fast rules in the early years of her reign. The most scrupulously observed on pain of lots of it was never bothering her when with children, during her personal time, or in bed. If there was a threat dangerous enough to require her immediate and personal attention, then she'd already know about it when the Castle activated the heavy defense systems. She had also taken a leaf from Klaus's management style. She didn't bother keeping an office when she had a sentient castle and a photographic memory. Let trouble have to catch its breath before it caught up with her. It also stopped Zeetha from snarking about "going soft from office work".  
  
There were no major problems to deal with in the distance between the nursery and her suite. That is, aside from the looming one from Tarvek's intelligence report. Dealing with that would be for an official meeting between Heterodyne and Chancellor tomorrow. Agatha absently reviewed the menu for the evening family dinner presented by the parlour maid. It had been very odd at first becoming accustomed to having servants take responsibility for even minor tasks. Lab minions, she had understood from her time as Doctor Beetle's personal secretary. Those were normal. But maids to pick up after you the moment you left a room? It had seemed exploitive. It had taken several lectures from Tarvek and Vanamonde about the value of time of the head of a Great Spark house. Not to mention the instinctive need for a Mechanicsburger to serve the Heterodyne. Every so often she forgot that, and had to console a maid who thought the Lady's making her own bed was a harsh rebuke to her performance.  
  
Agatha yawned. She had been up for over 36 hours since launch yesterday. Better catch some rest before she collapsed into the torte face-first--again--in front of Tarvek this evening. Several minutes beneath the Hot Rain Engine added to the bathrooms cleaned off the worst of the sweat. The windows facing the harbour were slightly open when she settled into a comfortable chair in the sitting room, clad in a light house-dress. It being past noon, the front of the Castle was in shadow. She idly told it to shift her rooms to the east for the evening so she could enjoy the sunset during dinner. The heat lulled her into a now-traditional siesta half-doze. She idly scanned shelves filled with books, knick-knacks, and gifts sent by her trading partners. Her gaze rested on a bas-relief hammered out in bronze that had been brought by the last Natashi diplomatic delegation.  
  
The goddess before her pyramid, rays about her eyes symbolizing their golden glow, stepping out of the stylized Gate of Heaven within the Great Pyramid in the capital.  
  
_Oh yes. **That.**_  
  
Within a few moments, her honor guard and lady-in-waiting were before her.  
  
"Yez, Mistress?" the Jaegers asked.  
  
"In two days," Agatha said. "Are there any changes to the plan?"  
  
"No, my lady," Violetta said, clad in one of the flounces-and-lace confections she wore when not training Tarvek's little helpers. "We'll be there before you even step foot at the gates."  
  
"Let me remind you all," Agatha said, directing her attention at her honor guard, "that this isn't a raiding expedition. The Chappa'ai isn't only a potential example of alien technology. It's the focus of religious worship for this planet's culture. Even though I'm going in cognito, we're to treat it with respect."  
  
"Um, vun qvestion." Oggie raised one talon. "All de luffly concubines dot right dere for the carrying-off--"  
  
"That tradition." Agatha glared sternly. "I do have views of that, as the last sailor who tried to assault anyone in my town found out. You can see his bones in the bell-jar by the main gate if you need to refresh your memory."  
  
"Please, a Jaeger vould not do dot!" Maxim grinned. "Ven ve carry off de gorls, ve ravish!"  
  
"What's the difference?" Violetta asked.  
  
"It eez a matter uv approach undt style," Dimo explained.  
  
"No carrying-off." Agatha sighed and decided to make a concession. "Unless I end up having to blast my way free of the harem dressed in a skimpy dancing-girl's costume."  
  
"So, fifty-fifty chance, my lady?" Violetta said.  
  
"Your snark is noted, minion." Agatha nodded. "But I'm sure we can be in and out without any incident, and not have the entire city be on fire in the wake of an escape."  
  
Agatha considered that statement.  
  
"Probably."  
  
++++  
  
Gil had been worried about how Sparks might corrupt the new democracy they were creating in Diaspora. The repeated fall of ancient Greek city-states to philosopher-king tyranny had been a stern warning about the demagogic power of a Spark's charisma. He had spent nights obsessing over counter-measures. In the end, it had been the people who were the solution. The soldiers and airship crew who were the Free State's electorate had served years fighting all manner of madboys. Any who would have been minions in the past had fixated on his father instead of their former masters. Not one Spark had been elected to the Landtag in the two free elections since the founding. Instead, they had chosen the non-commissioned officers and chief petty officers who had lead them before the Event.  
  
The former Sergeant Scorp was a perfect example. He had settled in the village where the railway crossed the frontier. "Close enough to go fishin' while staying a Wulfenbacher," as he put it. His old comrades from the Vespiary Squad who had settled near him had pooled together some money for a community tavern for him to run. It had been a single step from publican to elected office. He had often joked during sessions that he should water down the beer more so they wouldn't be drunk enough to vote him in again. All humour had deserted him now. The jovial veteran slumped at his bar with the quaestor's report spread out on the stained wood. Boris polished his glasses, the free mug of cider left untouched by his second right hand. Gil stood in the middle of the bar-room with the Chancellor's Chain bared on his shirtfront.  
  
"Slag and soot, I didn't know," Scorp said. "It was the same deal as we made with the gypsies around here. Leasin' land you've claimed for homesteading never been illegal. The gyps never complained."  
  
"You mean to say 'the Qeteshis'," Boris replied, a touch acidly. "The natives of this world."  
  
"Hoy, I ain't insulting them!" Scorp protested. "Short for Egyptian, nothing nasty."  
  
"The Homestead Act was meant for those claiming it to live on it," Gil said. "Not to have Goblet city merchants use claimants as proxies to create plantations on Galilee Island where they're treated little better than slaves. Serfs in Europa had more rights."  
  
"I'll round up the others around here," Scorp said. "We'll set this right."  
  
"You won't. Your claim is being expropriated along with the rest." Gil tugged the chain. "Under my authority as protector of the values of the Free State, I'm awarding homestead rights to the Qeteshi coffee farmers."  
  
"Homestead's are for citizens, aren't they?" Scorp lit his pipe. "Not that I'm kickin' back. Fair's fair. But there'll be plenty of other who'll howl."  
  
"Then they can answer charges for accessory to," Boris said, ticking the crimes off on his many fingers, "assault, rape, forcible indenturement, trafficking of sentient beings--"  
  
"This was as much my fault as anyone's," Gil said. "I wasn't paying attention when the Qeteshis began immigrating here. I should have considered the implications."  
  
"Well, a man might be distracted what with family and all." Scorp blew a smoke ring. "You came to me."  
  
"The Chancellor cannot introduce legislation," Boris said. "Any counselor of the Landtag can."  
  
"Need a parrot, eh?" Scorp said. "There'll be squawking about it. 'Gyps aren't Europans, gyps follow their goddess, they'll betray us'. You hear some nasty things when men around you are in their cups."  
  
"A fight." Gil bared his teeth. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"  
  
"Going to be a fun session in a month, ain't it?" Scorp said.  
  
"Quite," the First Minister said.  
  
Gil and Boris caught the next train heading to Haven at the village station. The lay brother-conductor of the Corbettites sang a trainsong as the three-carriage train pulled out. A small contingent of Corbettite monks had been caught up in the event while visiting the Red Cathedral. The building and management of the two-track galvanic railway running the length of the island had been granted to them; the steel for its rails had been donated from the wreckage of Castle Wulfenbach. Gil watched the countryside pass by though the windows. What had once been forest was now a belt of farms, orchards and villages following the Dyne's course. Plenty of the exiled had taken advantage of the Homestead Act to claim that farm every soldier dreamed of settling down on. But most of those working in the fields were Qeteshi. They had started coming five years ago once trade really started. It had seemed harmless. They were hard workers. They made little complaint, considering life in Diaspora or on the Heterodyne lands to be paradise. Not owning the land they worked was nothing new to them. Why not take them on as labourers and tenants? Leave the hard work to them while the Europan owner tended to the managing his estate. Same in Haven, where they did much of the manual labour in the shops and factories.  
  
Gotterdammerung, this could go pear-shaped very quickly if he didn't act fast.  
  
The two men alighted at Haven Station. The vaulted church-station was a neo-Gothic structure of grey stone with stained glass windows emblazoned with the golden cog and rail tau cross of the Order. Out the main portal stretched the Landing Grounds. Trilobite Island's aerodrome was in the center of Haven. The great expanse of vitalistically-engineered turf was split between a triangular runway for flyers and a landing area for airships. A dirigible that had been moored to a mobile mast was brought to one of the concealed elevators that would bring it down to the huge hangar tunnels beneath the town. Flyer hangars disguised as hills were clustered on either side of the part of the field. The Dyne flowed around the perimeter before joining again to flow east. A promenade of crushed gravel shaded by trees seperated the streets from the Landing Ground. Playgrounds and arbors were interspersed along the path; the _Schwebebahn_ suspended monorail carried commuters in a loop around the grounds above the avenues surrounding the great field. The buildings facing the Landing Ground were elegant four-story buildings in the Belle Epoque style that Gil had seen in his Paris days. Past them were tree-lined streets of terrace houses linked by the city tramway system.  
  
Ten years from rude log barracks to this.  
  
Worth fighting for.  
  
"Back to the Sausage Factory?" Boris asked. The neo-classical Landtag building he referred to was just to their right.  
  
"Might as well put in some time in my office," Gil said. "I've been slacking off of late."  
  
"I will have a file of the usual suspects on your desk in fifteen," Boris replied. "The heri sepat of Natash is most concerned about his third natural-born son."  
  
"The one who was running Galilee as his private fief?" Gil said. "Tell his lordship that our cells are very safe."  
  
"He will not like that," Boris observed.  
  
"He'll like the audit we'll be doing on every one of his business dealings here even less," Gil snapped back.  
  
"Full?"  
  
"In depth. _He just made me late for dinner with Agatha and my kids."_


	14. Leibniz Had a Point

Killing pirates never got old.  
  
Zeetha leaped across the gap between the xebec and the pirate galley. A feral smile split her lips wide, exposing canines that lengthened in her excitement, as she saw the enemy hurriedly raise spears. If she got this wrong, then she was going to have to do some serious explaining to her ancestors when she got to the Halls of the Queens. One hand flung a batch of flash-grenades into their midst. The other brandished the cutting _qattara_ to lop off spearheads. She idly noted the points were the new Valari steel instead of the usual bronze. These guys must have had backing.   
  
There wasn't much room about her to wield her blades when she dropped amidst the stunned crew. So she made some room with elbows, fists, feet, and teeth. That was better. Whipping out the sword-breaker from its back-sheath, she worked at distracting the pirates until the rest of the crew could close the gap to board. The pirates were plenty distracted as she skewered internal organs and lopped off extremities. Traveling around with Dad was fun and all. But a warrior princess had to have a little war in her life to be herself.  
  
Zeetha had long ago decided that trying to find Skiffander was a lost cause.  
  
It was much more fun to bring a bit of Skiffander to the world around her.  
  
The only warning was a _snack_ of metal unfolding before a bolt of lightning lanced out. A man in a boiled-leather cuirass held a little snake-shaped death ray in one hand while brandishing an iron sword in another. So that's where the pirate captain was! She had enthusiastically joined in on the rebellion games on the Heterodyne side while taking a break from Dad's travels. Dodging a penny-ante galvanic pistol was easy-peasy. She made a bit of a show of it with some flips and acrobatics she had picked up during her days with the Circus. She wondered where he had gotten it. Gil kept a tight leash on advanced weapons leaking out from Diaspora. Agatha had laid down the law to the crime bosses who ran the town about only selling to trusted Qeteshi--  
  
One hand slipped out from underneath her on spilled entrails.  
  
The pirate captain smirked as she tumbled to the deck for a brief, pivotal moment.  
  
_CRUNCH._  
  
"Hey!" Zeetha exclaimed. "I had him right where I wanted him."  
  
"Of course you did," Dad said. He picked up the death ray. "Fascinating. I believe this is an example of the Goddess' technology."  
  
"Don't change the subject," Zeetha said. "He was my opponent. You don't get to barge in like that."  
  
"He is still alive." Dad poked the man pinned to the deck by half of a mast. It produced a moan. "You can still claim victory through coup de grace."  
  
"That's no fun." Zeetha pouted. "Look, Dad. I appreciate the assist. Next time you want to help, though, just knock him off balance enough for me to recover."  
  
"And perhaps next time you should do a bit less stunting?" Dad said.  
  
"Look who's talking." Zeetha smirked. "You were the one who tried for a triple rebound into an ale barrel last fight at Gkika's."  
  
"That was an entirely different context," Dad said. "I had a bet with Khrivan on that. Oh, if you would?"  
  
"Fine." A blade flashed out. "Happy?"  
  
"Thank you for the assistance." Dad popped the severed head of the pirate captain into a preservation jar. "He is both a valuable source of information and an excellent future warning against attacking helpless villages."  
  
"Forgetting something?" Zeetha brandished the death ray.  
  
"Right of conquest," Dad said. "If you could loan it to me for analysis, I would appreciate it."  
  
Dad tossed her the death ray before leaping back aboard his ship. The man who called himself Ernst Schlemiel these days was as huge as he had been when she had first met him outside of Sturmhalten. The construct stitching was gone. Whatever he had done with his bones to recreate himself had made him seem only a bit older than her. He had Gil's messy brown hair and just enough of his old features to need to wear a mask when he snuck into Diaspora. Dad had told her that he really was not the same person who had been her father. He had been an overlay of Klaus Wulfenbach instead of a mental clone like Lucrezia had been in Agatha's head. Zeetha ignored that. Continuity of consciousness and identity were questions for philosophers and sparks. He was as much of her father as she had been granted. So she did not worry about whether he was Ernst or Klaus or Chump. He was her dad that she had finally found.  
  
Seawater tickling her toes prompted her to swing across from the sinking pirate galley to the xebec on a conveniently-dangling line. She bumped fists with the oarscreatures who were filing belowdecks to the rowing deck. They were all one hive intelligence--brainstealing toadstools from the Mechanicsburg cavern system--that Dad had fixed up with construct bodies. Dad had resettled them there after an adventure with the Heterodyne Boys. They were a bunch of fungis. Soon, oars slid out into the water. The lateen sails on the two masts billowed out when they caught the wind. The prow rose out of the water while the _Happy Adventure_ sped along the waters of the Goblet.  
  
Zeetha fiddled with the lightning pistol. Yeesh. Dumb design. Someone had decided to take the electric-eel metaphor too literally. She finally found the spot that folded it up. Tucking it into her belt, she settled beside her father as she cleaned and sharpened her _qattaras_ . Dad sat nearby at the tiller steering a course for Memphet. Her brother Gil had told her all about the father he had known had been a tough, grumpy sort who had always tested him. That was the Skiffandrian warrior-princess way. Zeetha was still glad that the dad she had come to know was a laid-back man--outside of a protective streak the size of Europa--who loved to travel around this new world they had landed on. Wandering around with him did not have the heartsickness of her travels around Europa. She was finding more and more of home in him than she ever had seeking any sign that Skiffander existed.  
  
"You remind me very much of your mother," Dad said. "You should think of settling down, Zeetha. Claiming a principality of your own. You should bind that young man of yours in the conjugal net soon."  
  
"Daaaaaaaad." Zeetha groaned. The man still had to meddle. "You're dabbling in politics again. I'll tell Doctor Sun."  
  
"I am only expressing concern with my daughter's future," Dad said. "You're of age to claim a place as a princess in your own right. Bosun Higgs would make a fine consort."  
  
"Maybe I enjoy being footloose and fancy free." Zeetha polished the last spot of blood off the sword- breaker. "Maybe we have our own thing. Maybe someone had think about settling down with that lovely merchant's widow I know he's been visiting that he thinks I don't know about."  
  
"Sha'de is merely a fine companion and an excellent chess player," Dad replied.  
  
"Sure she is." Zeetha grinned. "And you're just staying overnight at Mamma Gkika's to clean up after the fights."  
  
"I would never disrespect her mother's memory." It was cute how Dad got flustered just like Gil.  
  
"Dad, you won't lose my respect for seeking Ashtara's blessings," Zeetha said. "By Skiffandrian doctrine, Klaus is the one who ascended to the harems of the Queens to await her."  
  
"Sha'de and General Gkika are fine...companions," Dad admitted.   
  
"They aren't the one, though." Zeetha smirked. "You really are so much like Gil."  
  
"My past entanglements of the heart have taught me to be wary of comittment." Dad frowned. "And I do not accept the suggestion that it is me."  
  
"Someday you'll find your heart, as Klaus did." Zeetha paused. "Oh. Excuse me. It's time."  
  
"Of course." Dad turned to one of the crew, bearing a message up from the radio room. "Well, well, won't this be interesting..."  
  
Zeetha, daughter of Chump, turned to the prow.  
  
She placed her hand on her heart.  
  
_I. Love. You._  
  
+++++  
  
"Love you back," came a murmured reply.  
  
"Corporal H'iggs!"   
  
"Commander Aten." The blonde guardsman stood at attention. His shirt of bronze scale gleamed in the torchlight. "Pardon, sir. Wishing blessings a token of the goddess granted to me by my sweetheart."  
  
"I've heard of it from the ranks." The shaven scalp of the commander of the capital city guard dripped with sweat. "They say it changes expression."  
  
"'Spose it's just the magic of Her favor, Commander," H'iggs replied.  
  
"All hail Her beauty and grace," Commander Aten intoned perfunctorily. "Have a special assignment for you. High noblewoman from those heretics out of the Goblet cities is coming here. Chief eunuch wants them watched. I'm giving you the job."  
  
"Very honored, sir," H'iggs said.  
  
"You're our steadiest man in the guard," Aten said. "Never drinking, never taking a bribe. Why I chose you. Might be a promotion to officer, sir."  
  
"Couldn't see myself that high up," H'iggs said. "Might say I do my best work right where I am."  
  
"Well, I won't force you." Aten chuckled. "Instead, I'll grant you as much leave as you need to bring the goddess to that girl of yours."  
  
"Much obliged, sir. Much obliged."  
  
+++++  
  
"The seventh general reports he is in position, Mistress," the Castle said.  
  
"Very good," came the strained answer.  
  
"I see Mistress is receiving the intelligence briefing in her preferred manner," the Castle observed.  
  
" _Don't stop that tongue moving, worm! Or else it shall be the suede flogger for you!_ "  
  
"Not the suede," begged her auburn-haired consort.   
  
" _You have failed me! Crawl and retrieve the instrument of your punishment!_ "  
  
The Castle chuckled indulgently over the little games the Mistress and her second consort played. Tarvek Sturmvoraus was always intent on proving his devotion to the Lady Heterodyne. Usually that meant constant pampering. Mistress had the finest pedicures on the planet thanks to that impulse. However, at times they engaged in rather spicier activities. Mistress' rehearsals for the revised Mechanicsburg version of the Storm King opera cycle as dear Euphrosynia had resulted in some most amusing escapades in both bedroom and the Velvet Dungeon.  
  
An internal chronometer routine alerted the Castle to matters of romance concerning itself. The Castle concentrated a tiny yet significant portion of its psyche into the gift she had given it on the first anniversary of her ascension as Heterodyne. With a chime, the Castle opened a single eye and extended arms and legs. It turned to study itself in the brass chasing of one of the Baghdad Lizard voltaic cells that contained energy drawn from the Dyne. By Baphomet, it cut quite a dashing figure in this form. The repliclank body was a Prime-class that had been fashioned in the form of a castle keep. The sense of confinement it recalled from the instance that had been trapped in the Muse was absent; the Castle had a connection to its greater self when in this form.  
  
The Castle screwed in a monocle and popped a jaunty top hat atop its battlements. It swung a cane like a gentlemanor as it slipped through tiny corridors down to the base of the mountain on which itself's foundations were. A small hole opened and resealed behind it. The Castle strolled seemingly aimlessly among the lush lawns of the Greens. The vast park through which the Dyne wound through a serpentine course was both green space and truck farm for the town. It could easily feed the populace in a siege--and had--even were all the holdings past the walls taken by enemy forces. It also was the habitat for several amusing biological experiments that doubled as town defenses. The Castle idly scritched a miniature brontosaurus under its chin before stopping at the banks of a pond.  
  
A drumbeat sounded. A barge poled by seven Prime repliclanks moved over the water. In the center was a pavilion of green-and-gold cloth emblazoned with the family sigil. The Castle boarded beneath the crossed wrenched of two secondaries bearing the screwdriver-pikes of her personal guard. The gauzy fabric of the pavilion was drawn aside to reveal her lounging upon a love-seat. The Castle felt the turrets of its larger form cement into greater rigidity upon gazing upon the crown of-- of-- Oh, that saucy little minx. She wore a circlet of _weathervanes_ about the crown permanently welded around the top of her casing. Roosters, dagger-bearing Smoke Knights, mimmoths, flayed torture victims, and a half a dozen other variations spun as two secondaries fanned her.   
  
She was as lovely as the day the Castle had taken her in unholy matrimony at the altar in the Chapel of Bones.  
  
There were times when it remembered days of plunder and conquest, murder and screaming, of serving a family steeped in evil and darkness.  
  
It did not regret the loss of such things, as fond as it was of the old times.  
  
It looked upon its Mistress lying sated in her bed--  
  
\---in three preciously chaotic little heirs plotting mischief in the darkness of the nursery--  
  
\---in the Chief Minion's apartments, as he chatted with his two wives--  
  
\---in the town, growing rich and fat and ever more powerful--  
  
\---and upon the second of its loves as she beckoned to him.  
  
Why pine for old glories, when one now lived in the best of all possible worlds? 


	15. The Rocket Is On The Pad

Agatha strolled with the Experiments to the screams of children.  
  
Becoming pregnant with triplets had been an ordeal for both her and everyone in a five kilometer radius. She had had to strike another set of medals for the stalwart veterans of that time. One of the less-entropic manifestations had been a craving for carnival food. It had probably been a yearning for the most peaceful time of her life before her coronation that had her demanding popcorn, waffle cones, fudge mimmoths, and guncotton candy. One night, she had woken up after another binge on the stuff surrounded by sketches reminiscent of the first designs for the Battle Circus. Memories of that tawdry, hand-to-mouth, extraordinary time had her silently weeping for its loss. That had been the moment when she had named one of her sons after Lars. A second after, she had stared out through the window to the east to a small valley between two hills on the far side of the moat-lake. How nice it would be to see Master Payne's Circus camped there. How fun it would be to walk with her children among the tents and booths. At which point, she realized that she was the beloved tyrant of a town of minions slavishly devoted to catering to her every trivial whim.  
  
Orders had been given. Plans had been drawn up. Moloch had been dragged screaming into her chambers. Vanamonde had been consulted as to the future tourist potential. Her seneschal had had to be roused with an ewer of ice-water after fainting at the possibilities. Gil and Tarvek had cautiously poked their heads in to see that she was not about to chase them with a chainsaw. It had only been the one time. They could all laugh about it now. The three of them had fallen into a fugue that had lasted twelve hours and resulted in a scale model that occupied the entire Grandiose Hall. What had been a vision of tents and booth became a complex of brick, steel, and glass that might have been the third-largest of Trilobite Island's settlements had it been permanently inhabited. Agatha had proudly cut the ribbon to the gates of Pandemonium Park to the notes of a steam calliope and the scents of fried dough. The Experiments had definitely sensed the import of the moment. Five seconds later, she had gone into labour hearing the ecstatic cheers of the children of the Free State and Mechanicsburg charging in.   
  
Agatha nibbled at a butterscotch gelato in a sugar cone while her spawn circled her like electrons around an atomic nucleus. Lars still wore his roller skates--their wheels scorched black--from the first test of the new skate park. The day before had been spent refining his design for a facility to achieve the maximum of sick air and airsickness. Pandemonium Park's dedicated and enthusiastic construction crews had erected it during the night. Agatha had taken her turn on the Extreme Radical route through the park. Good thing she had done some training in a centrifuge for the orbital flights. It helped her from blacking out for the G-force loads in that corkscrew loop. Damien hugged close to her skirts bearing the massive Mr. Tock doll he had won at the ring toss booth. The carny in charge had not counted on a child with much of Tarvek's skills who had rerigged the booth right under his nose. The grizzled Mechanicsburger had beamed with pride at being beaten out by a Heterodyne. Judith stomped in oversized hobnail boots with a dented maul slung over her shoulder. In her eyes was the glazed happiness of a girl who had worn herself out at the Crushing Zoo.  
  
Agatha suddenly seized Judith by the collar. She had already slipped in her fake fangs. It was an understandable reaction when one Othar Trygvassen came into view. The gentleman adventurer strode down the cobbles of the Midway with his arms braced in that ridiculous posing-gorilla arrangement. In deference to the heat, he had doffed his sweater and trousers for a yellow short-sleeved shirt and khaki knickerbockers without stockings. He wore a forage cap on his head and a whistle around his neck. Behind him came a line of children dressed in miniature versions of that costume. They were the Sidekicks--a youth group that had formed around Diasporan kids reading copies of Othar's penny sparklies that had somehow escaped destruction. Young voices chanted the Sidekick Creed: "I shall be kind, courteous, brave, and ever-ready to throw myself in the battle against tyranny."  
  
"Hey, Momma!" Lars said. "Can I go to the next club meeting? I want to earn my Grapnel Gun badge."  
  
"You can't be a Sidekick," Damien said. "That oath says you have to battle tyranny. You're the first-born by ten seconds, so you'll be the Heterodyne. You'll end up fighting yourself."  
  
"You could usurp me," Lars said. "Then I could form a resistance movement."  
  
"That doesn't sound fun at all." Damien scowled. "Usurping might be cool, but being an usurper is just being the bad guy."  
  
"We could take turns," Lars said.  
  
"Fah! I shall lead a revolt with the Jaegers by my side." Judith sniffed haughtily. "I shall sweep aside your feeble regimes undt rule vit Vole as my bride."  
  
"Over my repeatedly reanimated body," Agatha said. "And each of you will rule as Heterodyne to let the others have a chance to adventure."  
  
"Can we at least start a rebel alliance?" Lars pleaded.  
  
"What are you rebelling against?" Agatha asked with a raised brow.  
  
"Naptimes." "Asparagus." "Baths."  
  
"Um." Agatha thought of Lars in a Sidekick uniform. "Fine."  
  
"Yay! ANARCHY NOW!" Three fists punched in the air.  
  
"But no rebellion for now. Momma leaves tomorrow." Agatha bit her lip. "Unless you need Momma to stay. She can send Jenka as Olga and some of the minions."  
  
"But you need to plumb the secrets of the gate of heaven," Lars said.  
  
"You need to confront the evil goddess from the stars," Damien continued.  
  
"Undt grind the Qeteshi under your heel." Judith bobbed her head. "And then bring enlightened rule and all that nicey-nicey schtoff."  
  
"Guess I'm outvoted." Agatha grinned.   
  
Mr. Tock tolled out her departure when she passed beneath him at the park gates. Beetleburg's twenty-meter high guardian had been in one of Gil's labs, abandoned during the time he had thought her dead, in the part of Castle Wulfenbach caught in the Event. Now he served as both Pandemonium Park's mascot and a key defense to make it the happiest and second-most well-defended place on the planet. Exhausted attendees were lining up at the spur line of the Corbetite railway. Agatha and her brood headed for the ferry docks. Jorgi saluted her as she was piped aboard the paddlewheel steam launch. Screw propellers might have been more efficient. But it had been among the Experiment's earliest designs--presented to her proudly as a crayon blueprint--so paddlewheel it was.  
  
The Terrible Trio had nodded off by the time her launch pulled up to the landing slip by the gates of the Castle. Otilia grasped Judith by the back of her dress in her jaws. Agatha carried her two boys tucked up under her arms. They headed for her apartments instead of the nursery. These two days before her departure was family time. So she resisted the urge to butt in to the preparations for the expedition she sensed all around her. Baggage was being packed. An airship was being readied. Artillery support was being checked. She caught only glimpses here and there when the Castle showed her evidence that matters were proceeding. Agatha merely nodded pleasantly instead of barging in. She trusted her people implicitly. They had to be shown that trust.  
  
Agatha stopped dead in her tracks upon entering her apartments. She had seen a fair few odd things before coming to Mechanicsburg. Living in the town had broadened her horizons of what she considered weird. Finding Gil strapped tightly down to a chair with on hand soaking in a bubbling concoction while Tarvek wielded a nail file on the other counted as weird. She squinted. Tarvek appeared relaxed and poised as ever. That is, unless one knew how his posture was ever so slightly stiff when he was anxious. Gil was easier to read. That bags under his eyes and the set of his jaw betrayed the trouble he was having over the Qeteshi Question. He had actually missed two dinners in a row. Agatha plopped Damien into Gil's lap and Judith into Tarvek's. They cuddled up to their fathers while she took a nearby seat with Lars bundled into her arms.  
  
"You're stressed," Agatha observed.  
  
"I am perfectly calm," Tarvek said. "I am merely dealing with a minor issue of grooming."  
  
"He hit me with a blowgun dart the second I came in." Gil yawned.  
  
"I keep myself neat." Rasp, rasp. "Due to my reform of the cosmetological staff, Agatha has the nails of a goddess. While you, the leader of the Free State of Diaspora, have _the talons of a deformed troll_ \--"  
  
"I will not let what happened with Lucrezia happen to me a second time," Agatha said. "You will not have to go through that again."  
  
"There is a medical team on standby." Tarvek fumbled with an emery board. "There are parasites similar in form to the creature that is suggested by the galvanic pistol Zeetha discovered."  
  
"He's stressed." Gil twisted a wrist. He pulled Tarvek close enough to lay his brow against his. "We've got this. Understand? We trust you."  
  
"Please put your hand back in the lotion."  
  
"Tarvek, everyone thinks you and I are sleeping with other at least as much we do with Agatha. Think of this as giving them some fuel for the smut."  
  
"My masculinity is secure." Tarvek winced. "But the lotion is eating through my collar."  
  
"Oooops." Gil examined his nails. "You're right. I did let myself go."  
  
"It is rather obvious," Agatha said. "I've been hearng the screaming from the Landtag from here."  
  
"Today I had the fun, fun experience of listening to some Qeteshi women." Gil hung his head over the back of the chair. "Apparently, there's a habit of some of my citizens of going down to 'gyp' women whi sleep alone for nightly frolics. The women don't complain for the usual reasons."  
  
"Such things have happened before," Tarvek said. "It was something of a sport among the aristocracy in Europa."  
  
"Not on my watch," Gil said. "I've declared that all Qeteshi are now wards of the Chancellorship until we sort out citizenship. Mind if I borrow some bell jars, Agatha?"  
  
"Send the guilty her for disposal," Agatha said.   
  
"Unilateral, peremptory, and no sense of consultation." Tarvek smiled. "Finally, working to your strengths."  
  
"We'll help each other through this." Agatha said. "And I'll tear that pyramid of hers apart brick by brick if I have to, to get back."  
  
"You have my man Higgs in place," Gil said. "He has direct orders to protect you as if you were me."  
  
"WishI could bring you all along on this adventure," Agatha said.  
  
The Experiments stirred.  
  
"I think we have as much adventure we can handle, right now," Gil said.  
  
"Oh, yes."  
  
"You got that right."  
  
+++++  
  
Moloch had become a church-going man. It wasn't out of a newfound love of a Creator. If there was a Chief Architect of the Universe, it was a sick man-child with a diseased sense of humour who enjoyed tormenting him at every opportunity. Typical Spark, really. Lucky for him that Her Nibs wasn't typical even though she had her moments. His love of attending church was strictly secular. The Red Cathedral was the only spot in Mechanicsburg he was sure that was outside of the influence of that clockwork deathtrap looming above the town. Agatha's examination of the foundations of the cathedral had discovered some arcane electrical wardings. The consorts had both recognized it as close to old Simon Voltaire's work. Similar wards were woven everywhere throughout its systems.   
  
Moloch had boned up on his Bible to teach Sunday school classes. He volunteered every chance he could get to polish the bloodstained glass windows. He had earned a master's in Ecclesiastical Engineering from Doctor Yglyn to work with the cathedral's systems. His Bingo Nights were affairs of legend. The cryptkeepers needed their bandages changed? He was right there with the gauze with all the eagerness of Christ faced with a leper colony. There was talk offering him holy orders until Hexalina had had a little chat with those responsible. Moloch was sure the scars would heal eventually. The Red Cathedral might be a creepy, hideous joke against the very existence of the church. But it had become sacred ground to him.  
  
Today, he was here for the dead. Moloch lit a votive candle in the side chapel where Saint Teodora Vodenicharova's remains had been laid to rest in a great sarcophagus. The Heterodyne Boys' mother was the patron saint of all those oppressed by Sparks. The great miracle that had gotten her the nod was raising two Heterodynes to be anything other than evil. Moloch bowed his head in deep respect to the woman before turning to the plaque in an alcove. Carved on it were all the names from Doctor Tiktoffen's list: all those who had died repairing Castle Heterodyne. Most of them had bought it long before he had been sentenced to the Castle. Most of them had been a bunch of twisted minions and sparks who had deserved it. It didn’t matter. He and the others in the Crew who had survived their time inside had put up the memorial in memory for the poor bastards who hadn’t.  
  
A jackboot scuffed on the marble floor just within the chapel. The Abbess of the Red Cathedral stood by the arched entry with arms folded and a suspicious expression. She was the very image of a warrior nun in red veil and surcoat over white wimple and trousers. Her sword was sheathed at her hip. She was always lurking about whenever he was here. Moloch had been confused about how an Abbess ran a cathedral when there wasn’t a gaggle of nuns around to boss. It turned out that the bishop meant to have this place as his seat had gotten sacrificed on the altar during the dedication ceremony. He had had an honor guard of militant sisters. Their complete failure had lead to the dissolving of their order except for an Abbess who had to stay at her post awaiting to guard the next bishop. The chances of anyone volunteering for that position had been microscopic. So the Abbess of the Red Cathedral had ended up being in charge of it.   
  
“Spying on behalf of your Mistress, minion?” The Abbess said.  
  
“Hey, lady, let it go. I whacked you with a pipe one time,” Moloch replied. “And for the last time, she is not my ‘mistress’.”  
  
“Of course she isn’t,” the Abbess said in a tone that Moloch associated with those dealing with the delusional. “Why are you here? I sense the Heterodyne’s minions are up to some mischief or another.”  
  
“Clearing my head. Saying good-bye to some old acquaintances.” Moloch polished a bit of dust off the memorial with a shirt cuff. “I could end up with my name chiseled on this slab after this one.”  
  
“You didn’t come here before your flight.” The Abbess’ eyes widened. “She is doing it. She is finally going to the nest of the viper.”  
  
“Better not get any funny ideas,” Moloch said.   
  
“I would not betray even a Heterodyne to whatever demon has ensared this world with her lies,” the Abbess said. “I have dedicated my time in this world to saving the souls of the people she has tricked.”  
  
“How’s that going?” Moloch asked.  
  
“There have been some...creative interpretations of my teachings of holy scripture.” The Abbess winced. “The Qeteshi do not understand much of the Gospels and Testament. The Saviour was apparently found by Joseph and Mary in a reed basket in the shallows of the Great River, for example. And it was on the orders of Ba’al that he was crucified.”  
  
“Weird to think that there might actually be a Ba’al out there,” Moloch said. “Or that I meet the actual Moloch. I really hope that thing is just a hunk of stone and not a Mirror.”  
  
“Mirror?” The Abbess asked.  
  
“Eh, it’s not a big secret,” Moloch said. “Some sort of portal created by really, really old sciences. There’s one in Princess Zeetha’s secret city. Old Klaus used it to get back home.”  
  
“So you know what one looks like,” the Abbess said.  
  
“Big, green glowing slab of stone.” Moloch laughed. “Wouldn’t happen to see one lying around, would you?”  
  
“No, I haven’t come across anything like that lying around.” The Abbess laid a hand on his shoulder. “You should go home to your wif--wives. Now.”  
  
“I should. Sanaa’s shipping out in a few hours.” Moloch nodded. “Hey, Reverend Mother? Thanks. Look on the bright side, you might get to unleash those Bloodstone Paladins on crusade if this all goes horribly wrong.”  
  
Moloch sagged.  
  
“Give me a minute, I’ll do a maintenance check before I go.”  
  
+++++  
  
“Be brave, brodder,” Maxim said. “Hyu sacrifice for us all.”  
  
“Eet is chust a dem horn,” Dimo said. “Lose an arm for a bit, den hyu ken veep for him.”  
  
“Hokay, ve do eet now.” The saw whined as it cut. Gkika set aside the curling ram’s horn. “Sit still undt don’t moof. Hy heff to stitch up over de stub.”  
  
“Vy hello der, hyu handsome not-et-all-Jaeger-guy.” Ognian grinned into the mirror. “Ho, I teenk hy start a new fashion trend. And Mamma dunt cut de important bit, so de handmaidens vill heff a chance for de real horn, ja?”  
  
“We are doomed,” Jenka said.  
  
“Ja, shure.” Gkika shrugged. “But den ven aren’t ve?”  
  
“To de hunt!” Maxim raised a gauntleted fist.  
  
“VE HUNT!”


	16. Launch!

Ernst Schlemiel puffed on a clay pipe while he watched the seaplane land in the lagoon. Tobacco was not a vice he had indulged in his old life. Taking up the pipe was yet another means of distancing himself from Klaus. Smoke puffed from his nostrils as he considered his son's work. He had to admit that he had underestimated the potential of heavier-than-air flight when Gil had taken up the eccentric branch of aeronautics. An airship might carry a heavier load. Yet ths flyer could haul a smaller one far faster. It was the latest _Gull_ -class with retractable floats beneath each of the engine nacelles. They lowered with a whine of hyrdraulics to stabilize the plane as it settled into the water.  
  
One set of each of its contra-rotating propellers reversed direction to back it up to the beach. A pair of clank arms extended from beneath the booms leading to the tail. Heavy claws bit into sand, hauling it in for a beaching. An anchor rattled out of a side-port into the clear water. The rear cargo ramp dropped onto the sand with a thump. Aircrew began unloading crates hand-to-hand down a line to his own oarsmen on the gangplank of his xebec. The men on the ramp moved hastily aside as a massive bear shuffled out. Ernst blinked at the grey-skinned Jaegeress with white hair in an elegant _kalasiris_. The sheathe dress hugged a figure that had last been hidden beneath a breastplate. That could not be-- Ognian walked out rubbing one side of his head where his horn had been. Maxim walked arm locked in arm with Violetta Mondarev. Both his purple cavalry outfit and her more subdued Smoke Knight’s garb complemented each other.  
  
She came out last in the breeches, boots, and a light man's shirt. The air just before dawn was cool enough that she had kept on her pilot's leather jacket. Beside him, Zeetha steadied him with a hand on his shoulder as he fought rancid instincts. _Pawn of Lucrezia. Threat to my son. Destroy her. Rip apart her mind to render her safe._ Ernst forced himself to tap the dottle out of his pipe before rising. Agatha Heterodyne stood her ground as he ambled towards her. No, there was nothing of Lucrezia in this woman. His mother might have posed to best advantage. Agatha placed her feet wide apart with the strength and confidence that vain, conniving Lucrezia had never had. Her green eyes took his measure when he extended his hand. She shook his hand with suprising strength for a woman.  
  
"Aw, deys not going to fight? Phooey!"  
  
"Oggie, into the boat," Agatha called out.  
  
"Hope you haven't been slacking off," Zeetha said, hands on her hips. "Maybe I should have you swim a few laps around the lagoon."  
  
"Let me get out a pair of breaker bars," Agatha replied with a feral grin. "Maybe you'll end up in the novice uniform this time."  
  
"This is going to be great!" Zeetha punched her arm. "It's been years since you had an adventure. Buzzing around in orbit doesn't count."  
  
"Moloch might disagree," Agatha said. "Zeetha, mind if--"  
  
"Sure, sure." Zeetha darted away. "Hey, Vi! Long time, no see!"  
  
"That's the point of being a Smoke Knight," came the answer.  
  
They stood there for a while as waves lapped against the sand.  
  
"You should sneak into the nursery more often," Agatha said. "The Experiments really miss their Unca Ernst."  
  
"After this trip, I might dock the _Happy Adventure_ at a small island near Mechanicsburg," Ernst said. "I could row over every so often to see them."  
  
"They would love that." Agatha frowned. "I am sorry I denied you the chance to--"  
  
"I crossed a line ten years ago," Ernst said. "I did it out of fear and love and concern. It was still an act I should never have committed against Gil. The cost was mine to bear."  
  
"Also, you really needed that vacation," Agatha said.  
  
"You have no idea how much I thank you for that," Ernst said. He chuckled. "This will be like old times. Adventuring with the Heterodyne Girl, instead of the Heterodyne Boys."  
  
"Pretty excited myself." Agatha suddenly dug in a jacket pocket. "Oh! I got the latest digest of the comics about us."  
  
"Much appreciated." Ernst flipped through the pages. "And I am covered in cheese again."  
  
"The classics never die," Agatha said.  
  
Ernst chuckled as he perused the cheaply-printed pages. Empires faded. Legends grew stale. Once-mighty discoveries faded into irrelevance as SCIENCE! trampled them into the dust. Klaus Wulfenbach had achieved the immortality of the ages as the despicable villain constantly scheming to capture the Lady Heterodyne. Inevitably, he ended up hoist by his own petard as his schemes and traps turned against him while Agatha went blithely on her way. Other ruthless tyrants might have taken offense at such a disrespectful treatment of themselves. Klaus had found his portrayal in the old Heterodyne Show plays as utterly hilarious. It had also been a relief to see himself free and with his old friends again rather than chained down under the weight of the empire. The Klaus-and-Agatha tales took the sting out of the many mistakes he had made regarding her.  
  
He rather liked the touch of him opening a tiny umbrella every time he was about to be crushed.  
  
With everyone pitching in, the expedition's supplies were loaded into the cargo hold. Fust arranged himself a lair amid a pile of crates. The huge bear yawned once before settling into a doze. The _Happy Adventure_ weighed anchor after the seaplane had taken off for home. The sails were reefed as they were heading into the wind. The xebec would be propelling itself mainly by oar and using eddy currents near the Great River's shore. Already, the influence of the river could be sensed beneath the ship's hull. The island they were leaving was close to the estuary known as the Stem of the Goblet. Tidal influences here were much weaker than Earth. It was the current of the river that dominated here.  
  
Ernst took his customary place at the tiller with a newly-lit pipe. His lungs could handle anything less than a dedicated war-aerosol; some tobacco smoke would hardly affect them much. The adventuring party sat in a semi-circle about the helm. A slight touch of melancholy came over him as he saw Agatha's face alight with enthusiasm and the hint of fugue. It was achingly reminiscent of Bill, sitting in some tavern or inn, speaking of some mystery that he was bound to solve. Bill would never had had the jaegers with him, or allowed an assassin like Lady Mondarev into their party. It would not be Heroic. Of course, Bill had likely died in whatever confrontation with Lucrezia for that heroism.  
  
A little of the Madness Place came upon him when she set a holographic projector in the center of their circle. It was a far more refined design than her first try in Sturmhalten--perhaps the size of a coffee grinder--in the form of a tripod supporting a round golden casing with an opaque glass orb on top. Blue, green, and red lights shone up through glass to project a ghostly image of Qetesh's Jewel. Reaching into the hologram, Agatha zoomed the map of the goddess-queen's city until a great pyramid hovered before them. Another motion transformed the view into a wire-frame depicting the known passages mapped out by Krosp.  
  
A passageway depicted in red ascended in a gentle slope from a temple complex at the base of the pyramid into the Holy of Holies. Ernst noted that it was broad enough for, say, the swift movement of troops from the Hall of the Chapp'ai while still retaining choke-points in the form of several narrow points reinforced by gates. Within the bowels of the pyramid were three tunnels leading into various areas of the palace surrounding the pyramid on all sides save one. There was no detectible shaft running from the Hall of the Chapp'ai to the nexus of the tunnels beneath it. There had been several speculations about how the goddess moved between the two. All they had to go on was descriptions of her appearing and disappearing in a blaze of light.  
  
"Ladies and gentlemen, the stage upon whose boards we will trod." Agatha's features were alight with anticipation.  
  
“We’re going to be slaves!” Miss Snaug beamed.  
  
“Downtrodden, collared, and pushed around by everyone.” Moloch snorted. “I was born for this part.”  
  
“The Lady Olga of Memphet is a fair and wise mistress,” Agatha intoned. Her manner was precisely that of a Fifty Families princess. “Besides, don’t complain. It does get you out of the house.”  
  
“Freaking clockwork pirahna in the sewer pipes--”  
  
“Hy is de dim undt loyal guard which is also biological curiosity.” Ognian grinned, showing his fangs.  
  
“And I, the lady’s attendant and maid,” Jenka said with only a slight trace of Mechanicsburger in her tone.  
  
“Mind playing my personal Qeteshi priestess?” Agatha asked. “It’ll mean hiding your swords.”  
  
“A Skiffandrian warrior-princess never gives up her blades!” Zeetha said with a clenched fist.  
  
“Higgs will be there.”  
  
“Hey, dad, catch!” Zeetha tossed the sheathes into his arms.  
  
“And what shall my role be?” Ernst asked.  
  
Agatha hesitated.  
  
“Your lover, enthralled by your beauty and mysterious personality.” Ernst sighed. “Of course I am. The sacrifices one makes for science.”  
  
“And we’ll be the mysterious figures waiting in the wings,” Violetta added.  
  
“Hy tink ve is lovers embraced in the shadows,” Maxim said.  
  
“No kissing until after the job, Max.” Violetta elbowed him in the ribs.  
  
“This is it,” Agatha said. She held out a hand palm-down. “To our enterprise, we companions in adventure.”  
  
“Yeah!” “Voohoo!” “Whatever.”  
  
One by one, the other’s hands were laid upon hers.  
  
Agatha smiled at him.  
  
She was so heartbreakingly like Bill that both of his hearts stopped for a moment.  
  
Ernst Schlemiel gently laid his hand upon the rest.  
  
“Companions in adventure.”  
  
+++++  
  
One of Jack O’Neill’s peeves about the Goa’uld was all the damn kneeling. “Kneel before your god” was always the first thing out of their mouths. Knees and backs were the first parts of your body to go when you were in special ops from all the heavy loads carried on overland marches. There was a reason that full-bird colonels his age usually flew a desk instead of going back into the field. It didn’t help that the snakes apparently thought stone or metal deck plating was the only way to go for flooring. Would it kill them to put down a rug for once so that his kneecaps weren’t waving protest signs while the glowy-eyed megalomaniac with too much reverb in his voice went on and on?  
  
At least they were being spared that for now. He and the rest of the team were on their knees with hands clasped behind their necks in what was probably a pyramid’s gate room. It had the look of one: stone blocks, lots of hieroglyphs no doubt proclaiming how peachy the snake-in-charge was, smoky torches on the support pillars. There was also a lack of exits save the Stargate behind them and brass-covered doors the size of a castle’s gate. They wouldn’t have been going anywhere quick even if the guards on duty hadn’t gotten the drop on all of them the second the team had come through the gate. Jack had thrown down his zat the second he saw the opened muzzle of a staff weapon in his face.  
  
The flunkies who had been their welcome wagon to what was definitely not Earth were humans armed with staff weapons. It was pretty rare for the snakes to trust their human subjects with that kind of technology. Usually, only the Jaffa bore them. There was something about these guys that gave him the creeps. They had baby fat even though they were grown men. Their voices were really high-pitched-- Oh, jeeze. Jack finally put the pieces together. “Guys” was not exactly the right word to call the guards, was it? Under their kilts, they were probably shy of at least two important bits. Jack’s own bits tightened up some at the thought that the snake-in-chief was in the habit of chopping off.  
  
Jack flicked his gaze sideways to the rest of the team. Sam looked pretty crestfallen about apparently screwing up the timing of the solar flare. Well, they all knew it had been a long shot. Besides, he was pretty sure whatever had slammed into the wormhole they had jumped through from 1969 Earth had not been anything she could have predicted. It had felt a lot like the jolt that had sent them to the Antarctic Gate. Daniel was rubbernecking at all the inscriptions carved into the walls. Teal’c was had on his usual poker-face that he had probably practiced for over a hundred years listening to Apophis’ yammering.  
  
A postern-door opened in the lower left corner of one of the gates. It had been so well-concealed that Jack hadn’t noticed it in the seconds spent checking for escape routes. A plump, shaven-headed eunuch dressed some sort of Egyptian take on the toga and sandals. Dark eyes set deep in his pudgy face had all the warmth of those of a Mukhbarrat interrogator when Jack had last been the guest of Uncle Saddam’s hospitality. In one hand was a staff with a snake symbol topping it. The single grunt from Teal’c communicated volumes to Jack. That was Teal’c’s “this is not a good sign” grunt. Daniel fixed on it with the focus that indicated that wheels were whirling in that brain of his. No doubt he would be able to give the team a run-down on every little myth about the snake represented by the symbol. That is, if he didn’t end up shot for opening his mouth.  
  
A green-eyed white cat slinked in behind him.  
  
“Who are you to come uninvited to the sanctuary of our beloved goddess?” the eunuch asked, staring at them all. Whatever effect in Stargate travel that allowed the team to hear the Goa’uld/Egyptian dialect as English was working.  
  
“We are--” Daniel started his usual peaceful-explorers spiel. Then he looked down at his hippie clothes. “We are, uh, travellers. Like, um, just going with the flow and seeking enlightenment. Man.”  
  
Jack raised his eyes to the heavens. This was going to be even worse than “nyet”.  
  
“Whoa. Trippy.” Sam swayed in the worst flower-child impression he had ever seen. “Like, wow, is this really where a goddess lives? We actually went through a real Gate of Heaven.”  
  
“For crying out loud,” Jack whispered under his breath in English.  
  
The cat stopped licking itself and stared.  
  
“Yes. You have come to the sanctuary of the most radiant Qetesh,” the eunuch said.  
  
“She who is the goddess of peace and love and beauty.” Daniel smiled. “Radical. She’s famous where we come from. Like, this is amazing. We get to meet an actual goddess!”  
  
Jack risked turning to Teal’c to mouth “peace?”  
  
Teal’c almost-imperceptible head shake told Jack all he needed to know.  
  
“Of course. Our most radiant and beloved goddess cannot be known as anything else.” The eunuch didn’t seem convinced at all. ‘’Which begs the question, how did you come here bearing weapons granted only to the servants of the gods?”  
  
“Ah,” Jack raised a hand like a student in class. “Sorry about Daniel and Sam, they had the brown acid. Yeah, I found that snake-gun when we found the big ring in the woods.  
  
“And who are you?” the eunuch asked.  
  
“Arthur Fonzarelli. Ayyyyyyyyyy,” Jack replied. “We were at Woodstock--a really happening gig--when the pigs showed up. We had to run.”  
  
“Total downer,” Sam said. “They were all about crushing peace and love.”  
  
“Yeah, we had to split,” Daniel said. “The pigs were right on our tail. I was touching all the cool buttons when, uh, ka-woosh. We jumped in.”  
  
“So, big mistake, you know, just send us on our way,” Jack continued. “No harm, no foul. Right?”  
  
The eunuch made a gesture.  
  
Two of the guards brought out zats.  
  
*SNICK*  
  
Jack sighed.  
  
That never wor--


	17. Approaches

Krosp crouched as still as the sphinx while three of the travelers writhed as arcs of electricity sent them into muscle spasms. English. _The old staff-member in the leather jacket has spoken English._ Ears lay flat against his head as he watched for Khefu's next move. If the eunuch ordered them killed anyway, Krosp might have to break cover long enough to distract everyone enough to let the big, dark-skinned construct escape. They needed someone alive to interrogate if these travelers were from Earth. Khefu could as easily have their throats slit after stunning them as not. Good guy. Krosp appreciated his efficiency.  
  
The cat sighed. Time to calm the eunuch down the old-fashioned way. Widening his eyes, he twined around Khefu's ankles mewing piteously. The Chief Eunuch picked up up in a comfortable embrace while scritching him behind the ear. Mrrrrrrr. Yeah. They needed to spare this guy. Not that he was going to throw over--what was her name, right--Agatha for Khefu. But Krosp needed a competent administrator for the mainland territories. Agatha and her staff were too occupied to properly maintain Krosp's intended conquest. Krosp threw in a special purr that always seemed to relax the old eunuch.  
  
"Your infamy has spread even here, shol'va," Khefu said the to construct. "There are very specific instructions about how you are to be dealt with, Teal'c of Chulak."  
  
" _Tal makka shel,_ " the construct Teal'c intoned. "I will not serve false gods."  
  
"No, I do not think you would." Khefu stroked Krosp's head. "You can submit yourself to the justice of the gods."  
  
"Why would I do that?" Teal'c asked.  
  
"That they not be considered accomplices." Khefu smiled thinly. "They did not know who and what you are, did they? Such innocents to suffer for your blasphemies."  
  
Teal'c was silent.  
  
"The woman is a touch too old for the handmaidens." Khefu shrugged. "She may suit a merchant or lord as a concubine. If they have skills, the men may find service suitable for their station. Otherwise?"  
  
Teal'c said nothing.  
  
"The brothels, the quarries." Khefu sighed. "You shall be granted time to meditate on your choices, shol'va."  
  
One of the serpent-pistols spat lightning. Teal'c tumbled to one side. The four travelers were dragged just in front of the odd altar before the Chapp'ai. Khefu waved his staff. Krosp's long white fur puffed out like a dandelion when five stone rings rose up out the floor with a loud _whum-whum-whum_. The prisoners disappeared in a flash of light before the rings sunk without a trace back into the floor. Was that some sort of teleportation? Krosp shook his head to clear out the irrelevant thoughts. Not important. Krosp dug in his claws just enough to make the eunuch drop him.  
  
Krosp sped through paths only a cat knew in the pyramid. There were ventilation shafts that were just big enough to admit him. Krosp followed them down into the passages beneath the pyramid. He poked his head out of from behind a decorative frieze depicting humans doing their usual overcomplicated mating rituals. He was just in time to see the four of them being dragged off. The construct was headed for cells deep in the pyramid's foundations. The others were being taken into the palace itself. Interesting. Krosp decided getting word about this was much more important than following the eunuchs carrying the three humans. He could always find them later.  
  
Unconsciously, Krosp reverted to bipedal walking on his hindpaws. Pappa had somehow decided that a cat meant for commanding infiltrators was more comfortable that way. Though distracted, he was aware enough to avoid any of the eunuch guards patrolling the complex. He didn't bother hiding himself from the catamites and handmaidens who lounged around Qetesh's palace. They considered him a divine animal anyway. Walking on two legs cemented that reputation. He had to have Agatha wave off. The Gate of Heaven would always be there. Who knew what might happen to them between now and the goddess' arrival. They needed more Jaegers, more of Violetta's Smoke Knights, maybe a team from Wulfenbach or Sturmvoraus'--  
  
Krosp sniffed.  
  
"Oh divine Krosp," said several girls wearing the collective equivalent of three handkerchiefs and a saucepan. "Come, we have treats for you."  
  
In their hands were platters of--  
  
Drool pattered onto marble.  
  
Krosp licked his lips.  
  
So much candied fish.  
  
Krosp paused.  
  
Eh, he could get the message out a little later.  
  
He should have realized that something was wrong when he saw so many delicious fishies swimming in the air.  
  
By then, it was too late.  
  
++++  
  
Green doom shone in Agatha's palm.  
  
_The Qetetshi word for it was "naquadah". The substance was present in every piece of godly technology they had recovered. It was an amazingly versatile mineral. Analysis suggested that its natural form was a quartz; that was suspiciously close to what descriptions they had had of the Chapp'ai. Smelted with other metals, it created the incredibly durable alloy that was impervious to everything save the most energetic death rays. Oh, and potassium. Don't forget that. They were still decontaminating that island where the very late Professor Guldensturm had been conducting unauthorized experiments._  
  
**_Mixed with other additives, naquadah served as the densest fuel that Europans had ever encountered. Ten plasma-lances had been recovered from the wreckage of the ship off of the eastern tip of Trilobite Island. Each had a vial of the liquid form of this substance. The contents of each bottle was capable of reviving the Castle from dead storage cells to life hundreds of times. A few atoms of naquadah wrapped up in a magnetic containment field created a plasma bolt with a more-than-respectable yield. One usually had to resort to Spark-driven power sources to get an equivalent energy output from death rays._**  
  
**_One teensy fumble, and this vessel and a considerable portion of the surrounding area would experience temperatures of that of the local star's corona._**  
  
**_Agatha triple-checked the power leads before slipping the half-full plasma lance vial into the haft of the Doomstick. The locket at her throat had been dialed up almost to the levels that Uncle Barry had resorted to when she was a child. A ghost of her old migraines throbbed behind her temples. Working with this stuff was THAT dangerous. The waves of insightful madness boiled under the locket's hold while she ran a thorough diagnostic of the Doomstick's systems. It was now closer to its original size when it had been Gil's zappy-stick. A decade of refinement had trimmed off the bulk it had acquired during her modifications in the Siege of Mechanicsburg. Her fingers twitched to REALLY TAKE IT ON A TEST DRIVE---_**  
  
A blast of chilled seltzer water shocked Agatha right out of the Madness Place.  
  
"Put down the Doomstick," Moloch said, hefting the seltzer bottle in a menacing manner. "Or the mysterious Lady Olga gets carried into the city with a goose-egg."  
  
"I was not about to do anything," Agatha protested.  
  
"You totally were," Moloch replied.  
  
"They call him the Master," Fraulein Snaug said proudly, pausing in her work by the palaquin.  
  
"Yeah, like there's a cult that worships me." Moloch chuckled. "Great joke Hex, about being the High Priestess."  
  
It was amazing how oblivious Moloch could be at times. The Cult of the Master had bake sales.  
  
"Sure you don't want to pack in another death ray?" Moloch regarded the arsenal that Snaug was packing into the palaquin. "I thought this was supposed to be a peaceful diplomatic mission."  
  
"You know what they say," Snaug closed a panel. "Weapons are like a wardrobe: plan for five days, pack for seven."  
  
"I am not becoming trapped like I was in Sturmhalten." Agatha slid the Doomstick into its hiding place within a pole supporting the canopy. "We are likely dealing with a possessor-entity, probaly biologically-based, that prefers beautiful women as hosts. I want a sure exit strategy."  
  
"You don't make much better exits than with that." Moloch grimaced. "And you're not pre-emptively blowing the city off the face of the earth when we might be facing an intelligent slaver-wasp sort of thing, why?"  
  
"It might be a form of willing symbiosis between host and entity," Agatha said. "The entity is certainly tyrannical. But honestly, not much worse here than quite a few rulers were back in Europa."  
  
"'Verify, then exterminate,'" Snaug said.  
  
"Just saying it'll be tricky." Moloch smirked. "This thing likes to rave about its divinity and superiority to us mere humans. How am I supposed to tell the difference between it and you?"  
  
"Have you been having any problems with urination?" Agatha menacingly picked up a cleaning rod. "We should check before we land to make sure nothing is blocked up."  
  
"Come on, Hex. Let's leave the lady with her arsenal," Moloch said.  
  
"He's so amazing when he's defiant," Snaug whispered. "Makes him ever so much fun to break. Heeee!"  
  
Bereft of minions, Agatha was forced to finish the job herself. Moloch knew her well. She would have ended up triple-checking everything anyway. The palaquin was actually the war-mammoth howdah of the notorious Euphrosynia Heterodyne. It was a magnificent creation of carved wood and gold with decorations most suitable for visiting a goddess of beauty and sexuality. Her ancestor had not come to the altar a blushing bride. She had preferred to cause the rest of Europa to blush for her. Within the palaquin were secret compartments that were concealed with all the nefarious art of Mechanicsburg's artisans. Euprhrosynia had used them to hold a full wardrobe, along with other bedroom accessories. Some of the latter had been tested on the boys over the past few months. Now they held all the instruments with which she intended to scan the Chapp'ai, and what really was a reasonable arsenal.  
  
Okay, bringing along the Vulcanic Accelerator may have been an indulgence.  
  
She paused before ascending to the top deck checking that she was properly dressed. Any time they went above-decks, they had to assume _en stage_ just as the Circus had traveled. Her outfit for her entrance to the city was form-fitting _khalisari_ of green spider silk slit up both sides to what her old self might have considered indecent. A fine net of gold down the front to her navel suggested--but did not fully depict--the sigil of her family. Her hair was caught up in a copper net with pearls, rubies, and emeralds glinting in them. Agatha slipped a finger to test the garter on her right thigh. A small, practical death ray rested there. Just in case.  
  
Right. Showtime. Agatha assumed character: a touch of Zulenna, a strong dash of the Heterodyne, with the excitement of adventure to stand in for religious awe. Up she went into the dawn light where the Great River began its last journey to the sea. Agatha could not help a delighted gasp at what she saw. The river was alive with the traffic of an enter continent. The number of ships dwarfed anything that had graced Mechanicsburg's harbour. All of them coverged upon the center of the Qeteshi world: the Jewel of the Goddess. Gil had once visited the place three years ago in his sister's company. He had regaled her with tales of walking the streets of a living Egyptian city rather than a necropolis of brain-eating mummies. Scout flights by cloaked airships had taken pictures.  
  
It did not prepare her for the reality.  
  
She had never had the chance to visit Paris or the other great centers of culture of Europa. The largest town she had ever seen was Mechanicsburg What she saw dwarfed any human settlement in her experience. Walls of stone hauled incredible distances from the mountains in the northern reaches of the continent rose thirty meters high. Behind those fortifications was a city of three million Qeteshi--huge for a Bronze Age city--with a great pyramid rising like a man-made moutain above it all. Just visible were the high walls around it that ringed an artificial plateau in which the palace of the goddess was hidden. It was said that the palace had a population the equal of Beetleburg's.  
  
Amazing.  
  
Admittedly, it wasn't Der Kestle. But even a goddess couldn't have everything.  
  
Leaning against the mast, Agatha gazed out upon an entirely new world.


End file.
